Global strike for climate justice: never again as before
Climate justice at the center of the global social protest of the Fridays for future.
”We need to prevent new pandemics by taking care of the planet.
Stop fossils and deforestation “.
(Federica Gasbarro, Friday for Future Italia)
Letter from the Fridays for Future:
“Dear Italy. Listen to this silence.
Our normalcy was turned upside down and we woke up in a nightmare. We find ourselves closed in our homes, isolated and distressed, waiting for the end of this pandemic. We do not know when we will be able to return to our lives, to our loved ones, in the classroom or at work. Worse, we don’t know if there will still be a job waiting for us, if companies will be able to get back up, crushed by the worst economic crisis since the post-war period.
Maybe we could have avoided this disaster?
Many studies argue that this crisis is connected to the ecological emergency. The continuous destruction of natural spaces in fact forces many wild animals, carriers of dangerous diseases for humans, to find themselves living together in close contact with us. We know with certainty that this will be only the first of many other crises – health, economic or humanitarian – due to climate change and its poisoned fruits. Ever hotter summers and ever warmer winters, floods and droughts have been destroying our crops for years, causing incalculable damage and more and more victims. The relentless rise in temperatures will bring us infectious diseases typical of warmer or still completely unknown climates, risking to plunge us back into a new epidemic.
Are we meant for this? What if we had a way out?
An idea that can solve both the climate crisis and the economic crisis?
Dear Italy, that’s why we write to you: the solution already exists.
The exit from the health crisis must be the time to start again, and the ecological transition will be the heart and brain of this rebirth: the starting point for a revolution in our entire system. The challenge is ambitious, we know, but the stakes are too high to stand back. We must start a colossal, historic, sustainable public investment plan that will bring well-being and work for all and that will finally give us a future to return to, after the journey into the darkness of this pandemic.
A future in which we will produce all our energy from renewable sources and we will no longer need to buy oil, coal and methane from abroad. In which by stopping burning fossil fuels, reconverting polluting companies and reclaiming our devastated territories, we will be able to save the more than 80,000 people killed each year by air pollution.
Imagine, dear Italy, your cities will be green and free from traffic. Not because we will still be forced into the house, but because we will move thanks to an efficient and accessible public transport. With a large national plan we will renovate public and private buildings, cutting emissions and bills. We will restore dignity to your infinite beauties, your parks and your mountains. We will be able to rely on air, water, and on the essential goods that your natural, healthy and intact ecosystems give us. We will produce the food we are famous for around the world in a sustainable way.
In this way, we will create hundreds of thousands of new, well-paying jobs in all sectors.
This Future is really possible, dear Italy, we are convinced of it. To face this health emergency we are finally listening to science. And it is precisely science that clearly indicates the route to be taken to defeat the climate crisis. This time we know how much time we have left to act: we have already entered the crucial decade. The moment of collapse of the only ecosystem in which we can live, the overcoming of 1.5 ° C of global warming, already stands out on the horizon. The crazy curve of emissions must be reversed already this year, and forever. Only if we manage to do so will we build a fairer country and a more equitable world, not at the expense of the weakest, but of those few who climate crisis have built their profits.
Dear Italy, you are facing a crossroads in your history, and there must be no short-sighted budget constraints or unfair austerity policies that prevent you from making this change.
Dear Italy, you can be an example. You can guide Europe and the world on the path of ecological conversion.
Not all generations are given the opportunity to truly change history and create a better world – the only one where life is possible.
This is our last chance. We cannot afford to go back to the past. We must look forward and prepare for our Back to the
Future Fridays for Future Italia
PS: this is only the beginning. Today a great campaign begins for the rebirth of our country, which will lead us to the launch of a series of concrete proposals, on the occasion of the global #DigitalStrike, on April 24th. And we will not be alone.
Taken from La Repubblica del 17.04.2020
