Andrea(s) Speck

Between hope and despair: we are rising up for the climate in 2020

2019 closed with a COP25 without significant results. Four years after the "historic" Paris Agreement, we are still not committed enough to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. In fact, we are heading for a rise of more than 3°C, most likely surpassing several tipping points and triggering even greater and more catastrophic warming.

However, 2019 was also the year of the greatest climate mobilization. Since the IPCC report of October 2018, which warned us that "global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate", something has changed. We have changed something.

Already during 2018 we talked about the need to close the gap between our diagnosis - the climate emergency - and our action. With that goal in mind, I went with hope to the Global Quorum in Malaga in October 2018, but I returned home in despair. Because behind the radical discourse of systemic collapse there was the usual response: training, more environmental education and awareness, which meant a giant gap between diagnosis and action. Where was the uprising then?

But other spaces emerged that also took up this challenge of closing the gap: By 2020 We Rise Up at the European level (born out of Climate Justice Action), Extinction Rebellion (at that time only in the UK) and the student strikes. Something was happening that did give hope. We were organizing something to nurture our hope and change the world, putting life at the center.

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#climateemergency #climatecrisis #climatejustice #extinctionrebellion #by2020weriseup #civildisobedience #hope #despair #rage

https://latransicionera.net/en/blog/2020/between-hope-and-despair-we-are-rising-climate-2020