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Climate strike Davis marks 200th anniversary

(From press release) Youth leaders held the 200th climate strike today in Central Davis, joined by a ‘Raging Grannies’ choir, students, families and other residents of Davis. Many held colorful home-made placards that urged Biden to declare a climate emergency, called for taxing Big Oil’s record profits, and advocated low-carbon transport.

The weekly Friday protest on the corner of 5th and B has been held since Davis’ biggest ever climate protest in September 2019 when almost 1000 young people walked out of school and marched downtown. It is inspired by the Swedish youth activist, Greta Thunberg, and is part of an international #FridaysforFuture movement.

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Davis strikers

On Friday September 15, youth around the world will again hold a massive global strike and demand an end to the fossil fuel era. Everyone is invited to join the youth-led march and action at midday (12pm) outside the Veteran’s Memorial Center and to bring chants, songs, murals and more demanding that Newsom and Biden declare a climate emergency. There will also be a family friendly event in Old Sacramento at 11am on Sunday September 17th.

Eliot Larson, coordinator of Fridays for Future Davis said:

“I began taking action when I woke up to orange skies and toxic air for what felt like the hundredth day in a row. I didn’t know what to do so I wrote a letter to President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Governor Newsom. I got in touch with local environment activists and took on the task of standing at 5th and B Street every Friday with a sign and encouraging my peers to join me. Now, two years later, I am passing this role of local coordinator on to truly incredible youth leaders.

I am leaving California this summer because it is no longer inhabitable for me. I need clean air to breathe. I need a place to live with tolerable summer temperatures. I need a place to live that isn’t rapidly running out of water. It breaks my heart to leave my birthplace but this is yet another reality of the climate emergency.

More and more places are being destroyed by the entirely unnatural disaster caused by the climate crisis. Hundreds of species are going extinct everyday, climate crisis refugee numbers are soaring and yet still everyone can’t imagine life without the fossil fuel industry. The truth is that we will only be able to survive without it. We do not have another choice. I listen to my peers talk about if they want to have children someday and they all say ‘why bring more kids into a world that won’t be liveable in 20 years?’

I hope that you will join us in taking action, whether it be by striking every Friday or otherwise, so that future children will not be burdened by the fear and grief that my generation deals with every single day.”

Organizer and participant, Mattias RowenBale (he/him), a 2023 Davis High Senior said:

“I’ve always believed that taking action, any kind of action, is better than sitting idly by. It may not seem like much, but every Friday in Davis there is a community on this corner sharing our message and advocating for change. We must declare a climate emergency, but we also must convince Davis to make progress locally. We still have a long way to go, and the presence of Fridays For Future has been vital in showing Davis just how urgent these changes are.”

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Comments

12 responses to “Climate strike Davis marks 200th anniversary”

  1. Alan C. Miller

    I am in favor of the reduction of fossil fuel use. Always have been. What I don’t think most people can comprehend is just how massive (that’s not even the right word) the use of fossil fuels is, and that that use in increasing per capita in the most populated countries in the world — and global climate change is just that — global. My primary issue is with the damage being done forcing the idea of ‘climate change’ that it gets ahead of the reality of changing mass energy use. The damage being done can be worse than fossil fuel use. Just always consider whole systems, not just tailpipe emissions where you are.

    Reply
  2. Keith

    I’m declaring the “Five comment rule applies to this article” rule.
    Oooops, sorry, wrong blog.

    Reply
  3. Ron O

    “Oooops, sorry, wrong blog.”
    Also, wrong “commenter” regarding “who” this is usually directed at. (Which then enables the “peanut gallery” to tee-off on that commenter).

    Reply
  4. Ron O

    The truth is that we will only be able to survive without it.
    Honestly, the “truth” is that humans almost certainly WILL survive with it. It’s not as if the place is going to turn into Venus.
    We do not have another choice.
    “We” do not have a choice in the first place. “We” can’t even stop wars.
    I listen to my peers talk about if they want to have children someday and they all say ‘why bring more kids into a world that won’t be liveable in 20 years?’
    On the bright side, it sounds like you won’t feel a need to save for retirement. I’d suggest a 20-year, never-ending “party” as a result. Break-out the speedboats, off-road vehicles, etc. As long as the remaining oil supply lasts for at least 20 years, why worry?
    But (in all semi-seriousness) not having kids is probably the best (personal) decision you can make in regard to the climate (and every other environmental concern). Not to mention saving a “Noah’s Ark” full of money (with the added “bonus” of not having to worry about “generational wealth”).
    (Note the “end of the world” climate reference. Every once-in-a-while I see a “news” story that they’ve found the ark, along with the Loch Ness Monster.)

    Reply
  5. Keith

    “I listen to my peers talk about if they want to have children someday and they all say ‘why bring more kids into a world that won’t be liveable in 20 years?’”
    I wish I had a dollar for every prediction like this that never came true.

    Reply
  6. Ron O

    The “truly” scary part is that I’m not entirely convinced that the world existed before I was born, or will after I die.
    I’m barely even convinced that it exists “now”, or what that even means.
    As such, my environmental concerns don’t make much sense, from that perspective.
    I have, however, become increasingly convinced that I will die someday. (For a long time, I barely believed that as well.)
    I’ve probably watched too many Twilight Zone episodes. (The “real/original” series, not the recent “woke” series. When Americans drove “real” cars – two tons of Detroit steel – with fins (and when your face was the only “airbag”).
    (Well, not that much different than now, when you look at the SUVs and trucks that most people drive.)

    Reply
  7. Alan C. Miller

    “I listen to my peers talk about if they want to have children someday and they all say ‘why bring more kids into a world that won’t be liveable in 20 years?’”
    This is why it’s good to have ‘old guys’ around, and I’m not even that old. And by guys I mean dudes I mean all genders all sexes I mean everyone. Everyone old.
    You see, I’ve heard child-bearing-people say that about the state of the world for as long as I have been alive. And from my perspective, both the environment and the state of the world is better than much of time I have been alive, and that was probably better than the eras of WWI, WWII, or the Depression. In my lifetime, I heard child-bearing-age people say they are scared to bring children into this world regarding: The Vietnam War, the Cold War, The Environment (in my youth many summer days in the Bay Area the skies were brown with SMOG, cars spewed blue-white smoke, and gasoline contained lead), Global Cooling (that was the prediction and the ‘thing’ 45 years ago), the assassination of MLK, the assassination of the Kennedy’s, 9/11/2001, and of course . . . Madonna.

    Reply
  8. Ron O

    Somehow, I feel like an “O.K. Boomer” comment needs to be inserted into this conversation. Just to stir the pot, as it were.
    In every sci-fi movie I’ve seen, it’s the older “deniers” who are the first to go (or at least be proven wrong).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0yz91zle28&t=77s
    Also, I wouldn’t count out Madonna yet in regard to the scenario.

    Reply
  9. Alan C. Miller

    “Climate strike Davis marks 200th anniversary”
    So there have been 200 Climate Strikes in Davis since 1823 ? I read the article and honestly have no idea what this is an anniversary of. Are we all being clowned and gaslit at the same time?
    “Youth leaders held the 200th climate strike today”
    So now it’s the 200th, not the 200th anniversary? Even so, there have been 200 climate strikes where? In Central Park ? Around the globe ? What does this number 200 stand for ?
    OK, so let’s say there have been 200 climate strikes in Central Park. What good has it done? Initiated some green-wash from California politicians . . . even some heavy-handed gaslighting in the form of infrastructure for increased development is ‘mitigation’ for freeway widening . . . which is happening, why?
    There is that saying that doing the same thing 200 times and getting the same results is the definition of . . . something . . .

    Reply
  10. Alan C. Miller

    I am leaving California this summer because it is no longer inhabitable for me. I need clean air to breathe. I need a place to live with tolerable summer temperatures.
    Inhabitable = habitable. Yes – summers in Davis are hot. But to say Davis is ‘not inhabitable’ is dramatic hyperbole. I live in a house that has no air conditioning (!!!) and have for several decades . . . and I survive just fine. Davis had more heat waves than ‘back in the day’ — I remember suffering through many such summers in the last century.
    Now, as far as the clean air part I agree — ’tis true the forests have been much more dried out with the long drought, and thus vastly increased fire activity and smoke two summers past – no argument there – that is not healthy. I do know several people who left smoke-and-fire-effected parts of California partially because of that.
    I need a place to live that isn’t rapidly running out of water.
    Then we need to reduce our population and/or the acreage of high-water ag crops.
    It breaks my heart to leave my birthplace but this is yet another reality of the climate emergency.
    I believe that if we are in a climate emergency, then we have been in one for centuries. The pandemic showed that we can reduce travel if we just don’t travel – but we do travel – and we are back to normal. Except public transit use is way down, probably permanently. And the most populous countries in the world are increasing fossil fuel use (as we once did) and probably will be for decades before topping off.
    So it’s on US to fix the world? How, exactly?
    Telling China to stop burning massive quantities of coal is like telling Putin not to bomb civilians, or not to pepper Ukraine with land mines. Good luck wit dat.

    Reply
  11. Ron O

    So it’s on US to fix the world? How, exactly?
    By giving up your gas stove, of course. Did you even need to ask?
    I need a place to live with tolerable summer temperatures.
    I’d suggest Phoenix.
    Or, on the other hand – migrate west about 60 miles or so.

    Reply
  12. Roberta L. Millstein

    The gas stove is a red herring. Although people have said we should trade those out, no one has claimed that they are the major contributor to climate change.
    The U.S. has historically been the major contributor burning fossil fuel. It’s only recently that China has overtaken the U.S. So it’s on the U.S. to fix the problems that it has substantially caused? I would say “yes” — largely our mess and we need to clean it up.

    Reply

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