Why in news?
Schoolchildren in Australia had demonstrated on the streets against their government’s lackluster response to climate change.
What are the demands of the Australian children?
- Australian children have been studying environment science in their regular curriculum.
- It specifically refers to the dangers of global warming and the impending disasters associated with climate change.
- But in addition to the curriculum, direct experience of endemic forest fires impelled adolescent minds in Australia to mount public protests.
- The children’s demonstration stated that, over the recent years Australia has experienced dire consequences of global warming.
- Due to this the children face dropping of their school routine on a working day.
- They were conveying the feeling that natural catastrophe would make academic attainment meaningless.
- Several student claims articulated specific demands, which includes the closure of a new coal mining projects.
What was the government’s response on the demonstration?
- Children’s mass protest received sharp reactions from Australian ruling administration.
- Australian Prime Minister responded that students should focus on learning and avoid activism.
- Other pro government supports claimed that students should be learning about geology and mining rather than protesting on streets.
- Global leaders see climate change as an irritating discourse, they also think it has no substance or truth.
- These leaders believe that no goal should override high industrial and economic growth.
- As for the threat of climate change, these leaders deny it and blame activist scientists for creating and spreading a myth.
What are the issues in understanding climate change?
- A basic lesson in geography in elementary schools across the world concerns the distinction between ‘climate’ and ‘weather’.
- The two concepts are typically explained as being different in terms of changeability.
- Weather changes from day to day and season to season, according to standard geography texts.
- Climate, on the other hand, refers to a permanent frame within we study change in weather conditions.
- So, the term ‘climate’ is used for classifying the world and each country in zones, these zones constitute the permanent lore of learning.
- It is intellectually challenging for many people to reconcile this notion of climate with the idea of climate change that the UN is using to warn people against terrible environmental disasters.
- Apart from this the sustainable development goals promoted by UNESCO have been included in the school syllabus across Asia, but their presence is merely nominal in most countries.
- Policy documents include environmental concerns, but priorities economic growth.
- In the context of globalization, most countries propagate competitive nationalism.
- It is used as a major ground for regimentation of children’s bodies and minds in order to ensure that they become proud, loyal citizens.
What the Australian demonstrations emphasizes?
- The Australian children who registered their protest on city streets feel more sensitive than Australia’s political leaders to the threat of climate change.
- The reason perhaps lies in the nexus between politics and economic interests.
- All environmental struggles are caught in sharply divided goals of popular politics and people’s right to live in a safe and sustainable environment.
- Those who espouse environmental causes are often seen as romantics while people who support fast economic growth based on rapid industrialization are perceived as practical realists.
- Australian children have rejected this view and figured out that the term ‘climate change’ means little to their political leaders.
- The Australian children made it clear that they have no financial investments to be redeemed by deeper mining for coal or building taller apartment blocks.
Source: The Hindu
