Starting Friday September 20, at the request of the young people who’ve been staging school strikes around the world, we’re walking out of our workplaces and homes to spend the day demanding action on climate change, the great existential threat that all of us face. It’s a one-day climate strike, if you will—and it will not be the last. This is going to be the beginning of a week of climate action all over the world. And we hope to make it a turning point in history.
We hope others will join us: that people will leave their offices, their farms, their factories; that candidates will step off the campaign trail and football stars off the pitch; that movie actors will scrub off their makeup and teachers lay down their chalk; that cooks will close their restaurants and bring meals to protests; that pensioners too will break their daily routines and join in sending the one message our leaders must hear: Day by day, business as usual is creating an ecological crisis that is destroying the chance for a healthy, safe future on our planet.
We are well aware that, by itself, this strike and the week of international climate action won’t change the course of events. The good news is that we have the technologies we need—the price of a solar panel has plunged 90 percent in the last decade. And we know the policies to make them work: all across the planet some version of a Green New Deal has been proposed, laws that would speedily replace fossil fuels with the power of sun and wind, along the way providing good jobs and stabilizing strong local economies and support the long term health of communities that have been largely ignored. We salute the people—many of them young–working hard to pass those measures against the entrenched opposition of the fossil fuel industry.
This day of global action is designed to support those people. We hope all kinds of environmental, public health, social justice, and development groups will join in, but our greatest hope is simply to show that those working on this crisis and those who have already been the most heavily impacted have the backing of millions of human beings who harbor a growing dread about our environmental plight but who have so far stayed mostly on the sidelines. It may take a few go-rounds to get those kind of numbers in the streets, but we don’t have too long: our window for effective climate action is closing fast.
We know not everyone can join us—on a grossly unequal planet, some people literally can’t do without a single day’s pay, or labor for bosses who would fire them if they dared try. And some jobs simply can’t stop: emergency room doctors should keep at their tasks. But many of us can put off for 24 hours our usual day to day routine, confident it will be there when we return. We hope some people will spend the day in protest: against new pipelines, or the banks that fund them; against the oil companies and the politicians that spread their lies. We hope others will spend the day putting insulation in the walls of their neighbor’s homes, or building bike paths. We hope everyone will take at least a few minutes in a city park or a farm field or on the roof of their apartment to simply soak in the beauty of the world it’s our privilege to protect.
Obviously this is a lot to ask: a day in the life of the world is a big deal, and all of us are used to our routines. But we’re not comfortable letting school children carry all the weight here—they need our backing. And disrupting our normal lives seems key—it’s normal life that is doing us in, the fact that we rise each morning and do pretty much the same things we did the day before, even amidst an unfolding crisis.
We are the people who happen to be alive at the moment when our choices will determine the future for tens of thousands of years: how high the seas will rise, how far the deserts will spread, how fast the forests will burn. Part of our work must be to protect the future.
Margaret Atwood, writer, Canada
Geneviève Azam, economist, Attac, France
Tom Ballard, comedian, Australia
Fadel Barro, Y’En A Marre, Sénégal
Nnimmo Bassey, HOMEF, Nigeria
May Boeve, executive director, 350.org, USA
Patrick Bond, Distinguished Professor of Political Economy, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Michael Brune, executive director, Sierra Club, USA
Nicola Bullard, climate justice activist, France/Australia
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Australia
Valérie Cabanes, writer and lawyer, France
Rachel Carmona, COO, Women’s March, USA
Dr. Craig Challen, former Australian of the year, cave explorer, vet, Australia
Keya Chatterjee, author and activist, USA
Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, political activist, and social critic, USA
Maxime Combes, economist, Attac, France
Thomas Coutrot, economist, Attac, France
Cyril Dion, writer, movie director, France
Tasneem Essop, interim executive director, CAN International, South Africa
Christiana Figueres, former executive director of the UNFCCC, Costa Rica
Tim Flannery, climate scientist, Australia
Nancy Fraser, critical theorist, feminist, professor of social sciences and philosophy, USA
Anna Galland, executive director MoveOn.org, USA
KC Golden, board chair 350.org, USA
Tom BK Goldtooth, executive director Indigenous Environmental Network, USA
Maggie Gyllenhaal, actress, USA
Émilie Hache, philosopher, France
Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist Texas Tech, USA
Dr John Hewson, former Liberal Party leader & economist, Australia
John Holloway, sociologist and philosopher, Ireland
Lesley Hughes, climate scientist, director of WWF Australia
Tomás Insua, executive director of Global Catholic Climate Movement, Argentina
Jon Isham, professor of economics Middlebury College, USA
Bhavreen Malhotra Kandhari, Environmental Activist, India
Satvir Kaur, EcoSikh, India
Puneeta Chadha Khanna, Hospitality Consultant and concerned citizen and mom, India
Barbara Kingsolver, author, USA
Naomi Klein, journalist, Canada
Peter Knowlton, General President, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), USA
Massa Koné, lawyer, spokes of the global convergence of struggles for water and land for Western Africa (CGLTE -OA), Mali
Winona LaDuke, executive director Honor the Earth, USA
Jenni Laiti, artivist, Sápmi
Bruno Latour, professor of philosophy, France
Judith LeBlanc, director, Native Organizers Alliance, USA
Annie Leonard, executive director, Greenpeace USA
Judith LeBlanc, Director of Native Organizers Alliance, USA
Michael Mann, climatologist and geophysicist, USA
Gina McCarthy, environmental health and air quality expert, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, USA
Heather McGhee, distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos, USA
Bill McKibben, Author, Educator, Environmentalist and Founder of 350.org, USA
Luca Mercalli, President of the Italian Meteorological Society and scientific journalist, Italy
Moema Miranda, environmental activist, Brazil
George Monbiot, journaliste, UK
Jennifer Morgan, executive director Greenpeace International, USA
Tadzio Müller, climate justice activist, Germany
Kumi Naidoo, secretary general Amnesty International
Mohamed Nasheed, former president of the Maldives
Pennie Opal Plant, Co-founder of Movement Rights & Idle No More SF Bay
Ricken Patel, founder and CEO Avaaz, Canada
Carlo Petrini, President of Slow Food, Italy
Dr Anne Poelina, Traditional Custodian from the Mardoowarra, lower Fitzroy River, in Western Australia
Ai-Jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance, USA
Raphaël Pradeau, spokesperson Attac France
Varshini Prakash, executive director Sunrise Movement, USA
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF Global Climate and Energy Practice Leader, Peru
Ingo Ritz, director, Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)
Mary Robinson, president of the Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice, and the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, Ireland
Mark Ruffalo, actor, USA
Takayuki Tsujii, General Manager, Patagonia Japan
Peter Sarsgaard, actor, USA
Dr. Vandana Shiva, scholar, environmental activist, India
Harjeet Singh, Global Lead on Climate Change, Action Aid International, India
Rebecca Solnit, writer, USA
Professor Will Steffen, climate scientist, Australia
Gus Speth, former director United Nations Development Programme, co-founder Natural Resources Defense Council, USA
Tom Steyer, founder and president NextGen America, USA
Chris Taylor, Comedian, Australia
Terry Tempest-Williams, writer in residence, Harvard Divinity School, USA
Aurélie Trouvé, economist, Attac, France
Joe Uehlein, Board Chair and Founding President, Labor Network for Sustainability
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, International Chair for Inuit Circumpolar Council, Canada
Farhana Yamin, International Lawyer and XR Political Team Coordinator, UK
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, USA