The global movement fighting climate breakdown has made some promising advances recently, chiefly thanks to Greta Thunberg and the other admirable school climate strikers. The British, Irish, French and Canadian parliaments have declared a climate emergency. In the European Parliament elections, Green parties and other allies got about 14% of the vote. A twenty-six nation 2018 survey found that of a list of major public concerns, climate change has the most people rating it a “major threat.”
However we can’t assume that climate action will continue to be a public priority. In a large poll undertaken in early 2019 in 14 EU nations, climate change was rated only the fifth greatest threat, substantially below “Islamic radicals,” “immigration” and “the economy.” Australia’s Labour Party unexpectedly lost the recent “climate election,” despite nearly three in ten Australians considering that the environment was the number one issue.
Merely getting more publicity is not enough to make sufficient progress. The celebrity-backed Mothers Rise Up climate march on May 12 2019 got substantial advance publicity. However even the sympathetic Guardian did not consider it significant enough to do more than include a small photo towards the back of the paper. So what can we do to attract greater support and show that we have the ability to push decision makers effectively?
