Children Empowerment on Addressing Climate Change

Why in news?

Schoolchildren in Australia had demonstrated on the streets against their government’s lackluster response to climate change.

What are the demands of the Australian children?

• Australian children have been studying environment science in their regular curriculum.
• It specifically refers to the dangers of global warming and the impending disasters associated with climate change.
• But in addition to the curriculum, direct experience of endemic forest fires impelled adolescent minds in Australia to mount public protests.
• The children’s demonstration stated that, over the recent years Australia has experienced dire consequences of global warming.
• Due to this the children face dropping of their school routine on a working day.
• They were conveying the feeling that natural catastrophe would make academic attainment meaningless.
• Several student claims articulated specific demands, which includes the closure of a new coal mining projects.

What was the government’s response on the demonstration?

• Children’s mass protest received sharp reactions from Australian ruling administration.
• Australian Prime Minister responded that students should focus on learning and avoid activism.
• Other pro government supports claimed that students should be learning about geology and mining rather than protesting on streets.
• Global leaders see climate change as an irritating discourse, they also think it has no substance or truth.
• These leaders believe that no goal should override high industrial and economic growth.
• As for the threat of climate change, these leaders deny it and blame activist scientists for creating and spreading a myth.

What are the issues in understanding climate change?

• A basic lesson in geography in elementary schools across the world concerns the distinction between ‘climate’ and ‘weather’.
• The two concepts are typically explained as being different in terms of changeability.
• Weather changes from day to day and season to season, according to standard geography texts.
• Climate, on the other hand, refers to a permanent frame within we study change in weather conditions.
• So, the term ‘climate’ is used for classifying the world and each country in zones, these zones constitute the permanent lore of learning.
• It is intellectually challenging for many people to reconcile this notion of climate with the idea of climate change that the UN is using to warn people against terrible environmental disasters.
• Apart from this the sustainable development goals promoted by UNESCO have been included in the school syllabus across Asia, but their presence is merely nominal in most countries.
• Policy documents include environmental concerns, but priorities economic growth.
• In the context of globalization, most countries propagate competitive nationalism.
• It is used as a major ground for regimentation of children’s bodies and minds in order to ensure that they become proud, loyal citizens.

What the Australian demonstrations emphasizes?

• The Australian children who registered their protest on city streets feel more sensitive than Australia’s political leaders to the threat of climate change.
• The reason perhaps lies in the nexus between politics and economic interests.
• All environmental struggles are caught in sharply divided goals of popular politics and people’s right to live in a safe and sustainable environment.
• Those who espouse environmental causes are often seen as romantics while people who support fast economic growth based on rapid industrialization are perceived as practical realists.
• Australian children have rejected this view and figured out that the term ‘climate change’ means little to their political leaders.
• The Australian children made it clear that they have no financial investments to be redeemed by deeper mining for coal or building taller apartment blocks.

Source: The Hindu