{"id":35287,"date":"2019-06-19T15:05:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=35287"},"modified":"2019-06-19T15:05:43","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:05:43","slug":"sample-translation-the-climate-is-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/anuna-de-wever-and-kyra-gantois\/anuna-de-wever-and-kyra-gantois-the-climate-is-us\/sample-translation-the-climate-is-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – The Climate Is Us<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois – The Climate Is Us<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

page 5-20<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a letter that does not exclude anybody. We want to appeal to everyone, because the climate affects us all, without exception. This letter is intended for politicians, for our parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 generation and for our own. It\u2019s a letter to everyone and we hope that everyone will read it. Yes, we can already hear you telling us that hope is naive. But let that be our strength. We won\u2019t be distracted by everything people say about the climate, what they promise or what they conceal. We look at the facts. The child in the fairy tale who says the emperor has no clothes is naive. Today\u2019s climate policy is just as naked. That\u2019s our accusation.<\/p>\n

But we also believe in growth. In this letter we\u2019ll explain why and what that growth means to us.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve started small; it would hardly be possible to start smaller. There were two of us. Our protest began at the kitchen table. \u2018Now we\u2019re going to do something,\u2019 we said to each other. But someone was ahead of us, someone who had started even smaller; entirely on their own. We looked at Greta Thunberg, the brave schoolgirl from Sweden, who started a Friday strike.<\/p>\n

Imagine how much courage and willpower you need to go and sit outside the Swedish parliament as a fifteen-year-old all on your own with a sign saying, \u2018School strike for the climate\u2019. At that point she had already shown more courage than many politicians in their entire term of office. In December 2018 she was invited to the Katowice climate change conference, where two hundred world leaders assembled to discuss the consequences of climate change. She was given one minute to speak and said, \u2018If a couple of children can make the front pages all over the world by skipping school, imagine what we can achieve all together.\u2019<\/p>\n

In Belgium, the country where we\u2019re growing up, the climate march organised by Claim the Climate walked the streets of Brussels on 2 December. There were well over 65,000 people. The newspapers said this was the biggest climate demonstration ever. One of our four climate ministers in Belgium \u2013 yes, we really do have four in this small country \u2013 said she would take our concerns to Katowice. Minister Marghem herself had marched along with that climate protest against the lack of ambition in her own policy, then had herself photographed in the private jet with which she travelled to the climate conference, and when she arrived she told everyone that Belgium refuses to participate in the \u2018High Ambition Coalition\u2019 \u2013 the countries aiming to be more ambitious in their fight against the consequences of global warming.<\/p>\n

We stared at our laptop.<\/p>\n

No, this was no joke.<\/p>\n

This was real.<\/p>\n

Do you see the contrast between that girl from Sweden and this Belgian minister? That was the moment at the kitchen table when we, Anuna and Kyra, looked into one another\u2019s eyes and said to each other: enough is enough.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going on strike.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll skip school.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll engage in civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

On Thursday 10 January we set off for Brussels. The police had allocated us a small square in advance. We made a video clip that went viral, sent out appeals on social media, our mobile phones became our greatest weapons and journalists wrote about us: the following Thursday two girls from Mortsel went on strike for the climate. We checked Google Earth. We let the police know that the little square would probably be too small. We were allocated the Europakruispunt near the Central Station. On 10 January there were 3000 of us, and even that square was crowded.<\/p>\n

On 17 January there were 12,500.<\/p>\n

The following week 35,000.<\/p>\n

And then came another climate march on Sunday 27 January. This time we went along ourselves, followed by camera crews and journalists. Again it was said that this was the biggest climate march ever: 75,000 people, but there were probably many more.<\/p>\n

And now we\u2019re organising demonstrations all over Belgium.<\/p>\n

The newspapers are full of messages about global warming.<\/p>\n

All sorts of things have been set in motion.<\/p>\n

But we still think of the kitchen table where our rage and our fear finally became our determination.<\/p>\n

We took the initiative of protesting, to make our voice heard in Brussels. When to our great joy we saw that we had managed to motivate so many school pupils to continue to participate and that adults, too, were answering the call, we knew that it was about much more than pure protest.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about connection.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not alone. On this planet, none of us are.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all connected because of the earth which we share.<\/p>\n

And we believe we should resolutely demonstrate that connection to one another, not just in the streets of so many cities, but also in this letter.<\/p>\n

So many politicians, after all, have said so much, so many opinions have been expressed in newspapers and on TV. We\u2019ve been asked to stay quiet, not to engage in civil disobedience, and to have faith. We shouldn\u2019t panic either, we were told from all sides. That sounded pretty panicky itself, to be honest, as if we were the main ones with a problem and not the rest of society along with us.<\/p>\n

The connection we\u2019re aiming for is rarely mentioned. The story seems not really to fit on news websites, in newspapers or magazines. At the start it became us against them. We see that as absurd. We want to talk about everyone here. Because even if it\u2019s important for us to be able to say a couple of things to \u2018you\u2019, to politicians, to our parents\u2019 generation or to people of our age, to us that \u2018we\u2019, that connection between all those groups, remains the most important point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To the politicians and policymakers,<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re doomsayers. You no longer believe in the future. You have no hope.\u2019 Shall we start there, dear politicians?<\/p>\n

Our question is simply whether you take science seriously. Because science itself certainly takes its task seriously. It has been warning us for decades about the consequences of our lifestyle on this planet. If we were to completely stop CO2<\/sub> emissions, from one day to the next, we would still feel the consequences of past generations\u2019 pollution and would continue to do so for a good twenty to thirty years before it got better. We\u2019re all like patients diagnosed with lung cancer. But it\u2019s worse than that. We\u2019re like people with lung cancer who refuse to stop smoking even after so many warnings.<\/p>\n

Already with the current rise in temperature of \u2018only\u2019 1 \u00b0C we are confronted with increasingly extreme weather, such as heatwaves, persistent drought and flooding. As the earth\u2019s temperature rises further, extremes will occur with increasing frequency. When the temperature rises more than 2 degrees, this greatly increases the likelihood of global warming becoming self-reinforcing, a kind of snowball effect so that it keeps on getting warmer. This means that there will no longer be a point at which we can stop climate change. That the earth\u2019s temperature will have risen so high that it will keep on rising, and that even if we completely stop emissions and pollution from one day to the next, we\u2019ll still be too late.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not opinion. That\u2019s science.<\/p>\n

Whatever political explanation you want to give for it, in the end it comes down to us using up this planet to maintain an unrealistic way of life. We have long acted as if it couldn\u2019t run out, as if there was a reserve planet for whenever this one really no longer worked. But now you can\u2019t overlook it. The poles are melting, air pollution is surging and every summer forests go up in flames due to extreme droughts. The sources of our luxury are not inexhaustible. We\u2019ll have to adapt if the coming generations want the slightest chance.<\/p>\n

When that realisation really kicks in, it\u2019s very difficult to get it out of your head. After all, how do you explain it all? Where are your explanations for cutting down all those trees to make way for industry, polluting our oceans for cruises, ruining our fertile soil, wasting water and intensively rearing animals to eat them? Our entire living environment is called into question and there\u2019s no way of justifying it. We\u2019ve spoilt our life on earth. Poisoned it with tonnes of CO2<\/sub>. That overexploitation comes at a high price. The system that has done this is coming up against its natural borders.<\/p>\n

We have known this for more than sixty years. But what does knowing mean here? It\u2019s taken decades for us to admit this knowledge into our consciousness. And all that time, all those long years, all those weeks, days and minutes, we have only continued to build on an economy based on growth and fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

We recently had a conversation with climatologist Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele. Do you know how many subsidies go to fossil fuels annually and worldwide? Five thousand billion dollars. In Belgium the World Wide Fund for Nature has said that the government puts 2.7 billion euros a year into supporting fossil fuels. That doesn\u2019t even include tax incentives for company cars worth 900 million euros a year.\u00a0 We\u2019re paying for our own downfall.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re using the planet like a credit card. We\u2019ve kept on spending and spending, and forgotten that there\u2019s a bill to pay at the end of every month.<\/p>\n

For years we\u2019ve put off paying any of the real costs and continued to party. And now we\u2019re deep in debt. This is a debt to Mother Earth.<\/p>\n

Of course we\u2019re scared.<\/p>\n

How come you, politicians and policymakers, act like you\u2019re not?<\/p>\n

Study, we\u2019re told, work with us on the future. You act like time hasn\u2019t become a luxury product, but remains something infinite. Perhaps even that\u2019s understandable. You all studied, we assume, with the impression that time was something you\u2019d never really have to worry about.<\/p>\n

Try standing in our shoes for a moment. Try to imagine what it means to live with the idea that time isn\u2019t infinite, that you\u2019re seventeen and a clock is ticking very loudly. Many of you probably already know that feeling. Many of you can think of things you still want to do, before it\u2019s too late because you\u2019re too old. But imagine hearing that clock ticking when you\u2019re young, when every adult tells you your life hasn\u2019t even begun yet.<\/p>\n

Picture our world a moment, politicians and policymakers. Please take a moment to consider how we feel at this moment.<\/p>\n

All sorts of things are expected of us. We should have faith, study hard and focus on our future. You\u2019re very concerned about that, but that future almost looks like it will play out in a castle in the air, or rather: in a society with no climate problem. When we start talking about global warming, you ask us to have \u2018faith\u2019. \u2018There\u2019s so much being done,\u2019 we\u2019re told. \u2018With a bit of effort here and there, it\u2019ll all be fine.\u2019 Your optimism is remarkable, because at this moment it\u2019s diametrically opposed to what the climate reports are telling us all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Anna Asbury<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois – The Climate Is Us     page 5-20 This is a letter that does not exclude anybody. We want to appeal to everyone, because the climate affects us all, without exception. This letter is intended for politicians, for our parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 generation and for our own. It\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":34859,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35287","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35287\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}