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You won’t fool the children of the revolution. British glam rock band T-Rex issued this warning in a single back in 1972 (just five years before oil company Exxon quietly received its first report about the warming impact of fossil fuels). But it has rarely felt as relevant as it does at COP26.
Today’s young people are coming of age just as the climate that allowed previous generations to thrive on this planet has begun to visibly break down—but just before our last chance to stop it becoming unlivable slips away. That clear injustice gives youth activists a special moral authority at U.N. climate summits: they’re celebrated with a “youth day,” invited to speak on panels and praised in speech after speech by world leaders for giving the rest of us hope. The attention has only grown since the school strikes movement, led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, took off globally in 2019.
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Read More: Vulnerable Countries Haven’t Had Equal Access to COP26. Can They Still Shape the Talks?
But increasingly, those activists are saying it’s all meaningless. “Leaders keep praising young people for standing up and protesting,” Vanessa Nakate, 24-year-old Ugandan activist, said during an interview for a short TIME documentary on youth activists launched Friday at COP26. “But saving the world needs decisions from the leaders.”
Young people worry their presence at the summit is tokenistic. “I feel lost, like I’m here as an ornament or to tell reporters what gives me hope over and over and over,” 16-year-old U.S. activist Alexandria Villaseñor tweeted on Thursday, claiming that she had been blocked from observing negotiations. Others report that young people of color have been silenced during discussions.
Tens of thousands of mostly young people marched through the chilly streets of Glasgow today to condemn the failure of the U.N. process to produce concrete change. They carried signs reading, “Dinnae dawdle, climate justice now!” (using the…
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Source : time
