Signs of the [Climate] Time
#SchoolStrike4Climate: Activisim for the Anthropocene
I didn’t expect to write again so soon, but this event is too important to ignore. Last Friday, local heroes everywhere marched globally for the planet. In my wee East coast corner of the northern hemisphere, I hurry downtown to the #Halifax core to document Earth defenders called to congregate at the Grande Parade, the perfect vantage point to aim their message at those behind the windows of Halifax City Hall.
I head to meet my kid whose school is taking part in the world-wide #SchoolStrike4Climate. We are not alone. Middle schoolers and middle-aged alike sprout signs crafted in earnest on behalf of Earth.
I’ve been documenting events for close to a decade now and I perform my usual photojournalistic dance, skipping around the crowd as it advances, flitting up and down, back and forth like a bee seeking nectar. Bees are vital and so, too, is this march. The number of humans gathered is promising, though I admit I expected a larger turnout.
This spring, Nova Scotia was beset by wildfires unprecedented in the province. In fact, Canada’s 2023 wildfire season left the most area burned in recorded national history. In June, a text flew into my phone from friends in LA asking after our safety. They’ve navigated wildfires for the last decade or more, but this was the first time so many uncontrolled fires spread so quickly and widely across this coast. These were no ordinary wildfires for the Maritimes. By late June, their smoke even crossed the Atlantic to affect Europe. In the greater Halifax region, at least 150 homes were destroyed and over 16,000 people were evacuated.
In July, my kid and I travel out of province and entirely miss the flash flooding that follows quickly on the heels of these wildfires. While I drop my kid off in Northern Ontario for two weeks at YMCA’s Camp Wabanaki, I hop across the Atlantic on a brief research trip to Denmark and Ireland.
Later that month, I awake in a Dublin hotel to an offer from a photo editor seeking to hire me to document the flooding. I regrettably must turn him down. I’m not in Nova Scotia, I explain. I sit across the pond watching the devastation unfold from afar like the rest of the planet.
So I’ll be perfectly honest. I sincerely hoped and expected a much larger turnout last Friday. Despite concerted efforts by Ecology Action Centre to organize and get the word out, the group was a smaller gathering than the one my kid and I attended back in April when about 750 marchers united for the planet. As I photograph the procession, I can’t help but notice the calm, bewildered curiosity of people at their business lunches and salon appointments peering through windows at those of us up in arms. Made me recall a TikTok video that recently went viral: tourists sipping Ouzo seated at patio tables while other patio tables float past on the streets of Attiki Greece.
If any looks of scorn were cast towards those marching, who could blame us if they were returned? For my own part, I fail to comprehend how anyone can blithely sit still at a time like this. There’s no better time to make a show of force; one that will prompt politicians to sit up and realize they will lose a vote if they don’t act now. No one should understimate the power of Vox populi! So where the heck was everyone?
I am grateful to those who did show, but I had to wonder. What could be more important last Friday afternoon than to send a clear message to those in power—particularly this year that’s been host to innumerable global climate catastrophes formerly described as ‘once-in-a-century’ and undoubtedly bearing that label for the final time? There are politicians still denying #ClimateChange when we need those in power and those seeking power to finally take the #ClimateCrisis seriously.
This week, I read that the US has pulled at least half of its funding dedicated to continued research in Antarctica, which has been melting more rapidly than anticipated for decades. The announcement was followed days after by news that the polar region has reached an alarming new low in surface ice. Both polar regions play a vital role in regulating the planet’s temperature so that it remains livable. Dr. Ella Gilbert explained yesterday why the reflective sea ice is critical to cooling our increasingly warming planet.
The polar regions were on my mind during the rally. I visited the Arctic in 2016 and attended part of the annual UArctic conference in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. At the Halifax march, a woman held a sign: “BE NICE! SAVE ICE!” Scientists have been sounding the alarm over rapid ice melt for decades now. It’s a ticking time-bomb for every species on the planet. We are all on thin ice, really.
While I figure-skate the crowd with my camera, I spy an elderly couple keeping their own pace astride the march. They shuffle along, arms entwined. Here to support the protest, they physically support each other. The man holds aloft a sign so poignant, it pulls me closer like a magnetic pole. Its simple message: “Climate Justice for Youth.”
My heart chokes in my throat as I photograph the pair patiently inching their way. I can’t help but think of my parents back in Ontario, whom I miss terribly and who both turned 90 last spring. I pictured them leaving all they knew in their 20s, the first in each of their families to emigrate from Ireland to Canada. No small sacrifice, but they sought a better future for their kids.
All morning, clouds threaten possible rain, and as my camera frames the couple, the sun stops playing hide and seek. It’s my eyes that leak a storm all over the sidewalk.
Activisim is a loud message we can all send. We march and shout phrases, chant rhymes. There’s drumming and even singing. And almost everyone participating holds or becomes a sign to support that collective message. I saw frightening signs, words of warning and wit, tongue-in-cheek, finger-wagging placards, posters that admonish and others that entreat, cardboard cut outs spouting stats and no-nonsense facts, paraded pleas to onlookers to prioritize Earth. Not just our own species, but all species not yet extinct.
The sign held aloft by two seniors as they held each other moved me the most.
Because it’s to do with sacrifice. It’s to do with a future they won’t know. They are here to support youth. Maybe they have grandkids. Maybe they have no offspring. Maybe they feel culpable in some way as members of a generation who contributed to how dire a state the planet is in right now. Whatever the reason, their message was about selflessness.
What might each human sacrifice to secure a better future? What might our species be willing to give up to restore balance to the planet that birthed us and sustains us?
Earth reminds us almost daily now that she doesn’t need humans. Perhaps she’s figured out she’s better off without us? But the devastation we are witnessing around the planet—the global daily deluges and wildfires—these are human-made. We live in the now and the era now unfolding is the Anthropocene and all its consequences rain upon and burn around us.
That doesn’t mean any of us can afford to give into doomism. If compelled to throw our hands in the air, let those hands hold a sign on the planet’s behalf. Folks cannot sit sipping wine and watch things unfold in despair, or worse, disinterest. Our species only has a small window to get this planet back into sustainable balance. Passivity, inaction. These are no longer options available to any of us.
Indigenous Peoples have led the way with sustainable practices for eons. Scientists have been warning everyone for decades now. The rest of us must step up. Real action will take sacrifice for many of us, not just for a better future but to secure a future at all for our species. Like every person who has ever planted a tree, we must collectively consider and uphold a future we will not live to see. This requires the polar opposite (no pun intended) of the growing greed and narcissism we have all witnessed politically and socially around the globe.
On Friday, I saw marchers of every race, every gender and age. Babies strolled, toddlers balanced on shoulders. Teens and tweens, millennials and middle-aged, families and couples, singles and seniors united in their commitment and devotion. An inspiring sight. This kind of action requires that we all prioritize a distant future over bemoaning the past, clinging to nostalgia, living solely for the present and its ‘me-first’ mentality. We gather in force to prioritize other species too, flora and fauna, over the sole survival of our own and what many of us have convinced ourselves are needs versus wants.
As one sign said, “Long term life over short term profits.”
I think about the folks seated behind each window, those who opted out of participating. Maybe they think the glass will act as a shield to protect them from what’s coming. It will not.
It seems to me no coincidence that as the movement grows to #EndFossilFuels, media jobs are being cut left and right. Journalism aims to report the truth without bias. Seems the corporate giants wielding power don’t feel it’s in their shareholders’ interest to support media that doesn’t return that support in kind.
In recent years, I spy the growing addition of Climate desks and coverage. Just as mainstream media might finally stop its rampant both-sides-ism in which actual experts and scientists are forced to debate their in-depth research and verified facts with clueless, couch-surfing clods, it’s especially disappointing to see newsrooms stripped to a bare minimum. Truth matters. Yesterday The New York Times deemed news of the global Climate Strike with a photo of Earth defenders as finally worthy of front-page and above-the-fold. I’m not quite sure if I’ve personally witnessed that kind of prominence before for climate-related news. Long overdue and not a moment too soon.
This won’t be the last Climate march locally or globally. I encourage everyone to stand in force and en masse because no one, not one of us, will survive what our collective inaction promises to enact.
So put down your fork. Pick up a sign. Stand up for Earth. If you can’t join a march in your area, then make sure next time you’re at the polls, you send a message to every government leader and politician out there. Support a candidate who supports real #ClimateActionNow and #VoteEarth! Like the sign below says, “It’s past time to get off our gasses and do something!”
