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September 20, 2019 01:14 PM UTC

PHOTOS: Youth Spotlight Climate Crisis with Rally, Strikes

  • 52 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Protesters swamped the Plaza in front Denver’s Union Station today, in their kickoff event for a week of events (Sept. 21-29) as part of the Global Climate Strike & Week of Actions.

Here are a few photos of the rally.

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52 thoughts on “PHOTOS: Youth Spotlight Climate Crisis with Rally, Strikes”

  1. Could someone please explain to me the existential threat to humanity from climate change?  I'm serious.  I understand the impacts of drought, bigger storms, sea level rise, etc.  But, I don't think any of those are threats to the very existence of humankind. 

    2. The existential threat is to those humans directly impacted by climate change right now: islanders, flood-plain dwellers, people who live near large, dry forests, people who need to grow food or graze animals on drought-seared land. For example, more than half of the Guatemalan refugees at our border fled because they could no longer grow food on their land. So for those refugees, climate change is an existential threat. For most North Americans not in a flooding or wildfire area, it isn’t ….yet.

      The Department of Defense in 2014 called climate change a “threat multiplier”. 

      Even under $rump, intelligence and defense agencies report that climate change is a threat to national security, because of hazards to infrastructure and potential to aggravate civil unrest by forcing stable civilians to become vulnerable refugees.

      Everything interacts- at what point do a few degrees in temperature become the deciding factor in human survival? 

            1. <knuckle flex>

              Ok, I got two answers for you. or all y'all

              1.
              – rising temperatures alter the composition of the sea water. More nitrogen, more CO2 and this kills the coral reef
              – it alters the breeding and nesting/hive behavior of birds and bees
              – fewer birds, fewer bees and we get less pollination
              – at some point there is not enough pollination to sustain the food chain with 7 billion people
              – population overshoot rarely results in smooth correction to sustainable level, more commmonly resulting in population crash to a much much lower level
              – at that lower level, the infrastructure cannot be maintained and we go off line, off grid.
              – small pockets of humans may survive, but maybe not. And if they do, there is no civilization.
              – even if small groups survive, they are so sad by the lack of coral reef, they despair and give up

              or
              There is no such thing as climate change.
              Unless there is, but it's not caused by humans.
              Or it is, but there is nothing we can do about it.
              Or there is, but it would be way too expensive.
              Or we could, but God has a plan.
              Or the plan is to make humans choose or die and we choose death.
              But it's Obama's fault. And Her emails.
              Thoughts and more thoughts.

              I still cannot believe there is no rapture insurance.
              How are all the filthy stoopid sinners going to know I was right and superior if there is no message from me to them in their shitty afterlife?

    3. a REASONABLE primer on consequences of warming is available at https://350.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The_Peoples_Dossier_on_1.5C_LQ.pdf

      pages 11-16 lay out some dominant threats.

      Or, the UN process has produced a number of reports.  You can find one at

      WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018

      pages 30 and following stress some of the threats. 

      There are many who minimize the threats, pointing to past apocalyptic predictions which did not come true — yet.   On the other hand, you can also find more extreme possibilities — dealing with resurrection of old viruses and bacteria with no element of natural resistance, or loss of an ocean current, or die off of coral reefs. 

      1. Thanks to John in Denver and Pseudo for the links.  John's links again just describe bad effects assuming an 2.5 degree increase.  As usual, they state "To save our planet we need to…."  without ever laying out how the planet will be lost.

        Pseudo's Vox link is particularly on point to my question whether climate change is an existential threat.  The article starts with Elizabeth Warren at CNN's climate town hall just last month stating that "climate change is the one (risk) that threatens all life on this planet."  That's the kind of bullshit that I am challenging.  And, Vox's article goes on to essentially debunk this notion that all of humanity and even all life on the planet will be destroyed.  No, the scientists say, humanity and life can continue, but there will be big impacts particularly on humans who are already at risk.  So, I think we need to confront those that say we will lose the planet because of climate change.  We need to focus on the economic costs of not addressing climate change and the economic benefits of doing something.  For example, Michael Bennet has pointed out for years the economic benefits to Colorado of building wind turbines and solar energy panels.

        I also believe we need to confront population growth.  Marie Osmond has been on television recently (for some unknown reason).  She noted that she was from a family with 8 children and that she also has 8 children.  OMG. Do the math!  What kind of carbon footprint is she creating?  A whole lot more than my recycling and electric car can ever compensate.  We have too damn many humans on this planet.  Whether it's a flu epidemic or climate change, something will happen to reduce our numbers, not in an existential way, but in a way that may reduce carbon emissions on its own.  I've got $100 to any politician who raises population growth that needs to be addressed.

        1. Since we're nit-picking on words we use to describe broad challenges, one could make the argument that we have plenty of resources on this planet for its current and future inhabitants.  We produce more calories person than at any other time in recorded history, yet, like our economic model taking us to a two-class system, we face both food insecurity and extreme obesity simultaneously.  

          This boils down to nothing but international political will. 

          The Netherlands, an area 1/10 the size of the Ogallala aquifer, feeds a good chunk of the world. What do we do with a precious resource like the Ogallala?  We take coal-fired power in Wyoming, transmit it through our federally-subsidized rural electric system, pay nothing for the fossil water we withdraw, grow corn that has to be federally-subsidized in the marketplace with a federally-subsidized insurance product to keep the bankers happy.  Then feed it to cows. This may be the dumbest *ucking food system on the planet (besides chopping down old growth forests for palm oil). 

          We have the resources to feed the masses, we just make different choices. 

          As to existential threats, whatever lies ahead of us is something myself and maybe you (not sure of your age) will survive just fine.  I'd kinda like to help assure I leave a livable planet for my grandchildren, of which I already have five, and their children.  Maybe avert a Hunger Games scenario and keep my home county from becoming a Ward 13?

          So while we nitpick over existential, maybe we can focus on the obvious? 

    5. By itself, you might think so.   However, we do not live in divorced isolation from all the other small (so called “insignificant”) flora, fauna, insects, algae, plankton, and bacteria that make up the bulk of the biomass of this threatened planet.

      If these climatic changes were happening ever so slowly over several millions of years, perhaps — perhaps — the biomass could evolve and adapt gradually to the changes.  The fact that these changes have occurred in a span of something like just a mere century to century and a half means that adaptation can’t keep up.  The fact that the majority of these changes has occurred in just a few decades, and that the causes have accelerated, not declined, should be terrifying.  The only alternative to adaptation is extinction.

      We mortals gauge our lifetimes as being long.  They’re not.  And in ecological terms they’re but an eyeblink. We may be able to shed our winter outerwear for Bermuda shorts, and turn down our thermostats at home, but most organisms at the base of our planetary support chain can’t. Similarly, humans are incredibly mobile, unlike nearly all the varied but necessary “insignificant” components of the biomass.

      We’re losing every year, species, rainforest acres, arable land, fresh water, coral reefs (the nurseries of all sea life), biomass — the small cellular creatures that feed the creatures that feed the creatures that feed the creatures that we eventually eat and depend upon for food directly or indirectly (pollinators, seed dispersers, fertilizers, etc.)  We’re seeing declining sea harvests, declining agricultural harvests, loss of habitable lands . . . 

      Yeah, if “existential” and “humankind” means just our little lifetimes of 80ish years — then, OK, most of us here breathing now today will probably muddle through to our graveyard ends, so, no problem no worries, right??  

      But if “existential” means within the next 100 to 200 years — if we don’t change significantly and drastically now, it will be a truly existential threat within the lifetimes of our children’s children, and their children; that “humankind.”  Of that, I have no doubt. 

      Any kind of global environmental change that happens noticeably within just the span of one small human lifetime, really oughta’ scare the fucking begeezus out of anyone who has any concern for more than just their one lifetime.

      If we sighted a planetary ending comet or asteroid headed our way, due to crash in four or five decades, you’d probably term that an “existential threat to humankind.” The climatic catastrophe careening this way is way bigger in likely certain impact than any asteroid strike we could imagine.

      PS — that our vile little multiple-personality pissant, Moderatus (version 1.0), seems to agree, in any part, with you ought to be just about the 100% certainty that you’re seeking to know how totally and absolutely wrong you are in your thinking?

      1. If I'm a dullard climate denier (like our little beauty queen) and only care about my next tax cut or the next quarter dividends, you might think the existential threat is our ability to insure our future.  Financially.   

        Moddy is the Arthur Laffer of climate science.

         

          1. Thanks Michael.

            ”Since 1974 . . .”  That’s what’s so damn maddening, isn’t it?  In the same nearly half-century our government hasn’t done anything but contribute more to the problem.

            The issue has never been one of ignorance in the sense of not knowing about the problem and the causes, although ignorance has been gleefully shoveled by the carbon companies to our willfully ignorant stooges.

            I’m not convinced that the betting-house insurers are the answer.  They’re not really trying to solve the problem which they understand, they’re merely seeking to place the odds properly so that they can continue to rake it in from the mathematically challenged at their craps table.  I’m seeing visions of the casino on the Titanic . . . 

            Reducing the bond ratings of the most climatically vulnerable countries is not just blaming the victims, it’s punishing the victims.  In a just world the perpetrators would be the ones being punished.

            I sincerely wish that the world’s sane countries would start imposing real tariffs and/or boycott the products sold by the handful of renegade perpetrator countries (i.e., us) that refuse to comply with, and demonstrably meet, concrete carbon emissions reduction targets.  The first rule of holes, as it were. 

            1. Boom.  The US military has a been warning us about the costs and climate change as a threat multiplier since it's Quadrennial Review in the Bush administration.  #ExxonKnew long ago this day would come.  They've counted on rubes like PoddyMouth to carry their water – and they have.  

              [a]s early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming.

              This reminds me of the notion that some blame the bread lines in Havana on socialism, but dismiss the notion that capitalism is to blame for Detroit. 

              Climate change is a 'market failure' of epic proportions. 

            3. "… half-century our government hasn’t done anything "
              What?!
              That bs.

              Our government has stagnated or decreased the wages of the middle class. Made higher ed more expensive. Fought two wars on the credit card (including the dread land war in Asia) and renamed several post offices.

              Hardly nothing.

    6. Given the numerous intelligent response to your question without so much as a "thanks for sharing" as acknowledgment, one must assume you've withdrawn to trolldom.

      1. Right- but what if God has a plan?
        I mean, are you one of those people who don't understand that God cannot create a rock so large He Himself couldn't lift it?

        Jesus rode dinosaurs – get used to it.

    4. How massive? . . . 

      . . . a part of any one day at DIA massive?  A bronco football game massive?  One college football game massive?  A big, beautiful military parade massive? A Ttump flight to Mar-a-Lago massive?

      Ijit.

  3. While I agree with their overall message and I applaud their making noise on the issue, they may want to do a spell check before hoisting their signs:  "I've seen smarter cabinents [sic] at IKEA."

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