Actions for climate

About a hundred people demonstrated in Briviesca (Burgos) on 27 September demanding concrete measures to deal with the climate emergency.

There were also mass demonstrations in other towns in the province of Burgos, including the capital and Vilviestre.

On the 27th of September 2019, the week of action for the climate culminated with mass mobilisations and demonstrations in some two hundred municipalities throughout Spain. Throughout the day hundreds of thousands of people joined the World Climate Strike in a shared cry to demand effective action in the face of the climate emergency.

After thousands of calls around the world and millions of people calling for real measures to move towards a zero-emissions model, the position of citizens in the face of the climate crisis is clear. Society is listening to science and is aware of the seriousness of the situation.

The intense work that the convening organizations have been carrying out culminates in a massive act in the face of climate emergency.

Under the slogan “Climate emergency”, citizens have requested the necessary measures to confront the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves.

After the climate action summit held at the beginning of the week in New York, the declarations of many political leaders pointed out the need to move from speeches to action. However, the reality is that the international community has not put forward any concrete measures in this regard. Inaction that condemns the planet to a global warming of more than 3.5 ºC with catastrophic consequences, especially in the Mediterranean regions.

We read so much about climate change (not: climate collapse or emergency or climate destruction) that we think we already know everything.

The effects can be seen and felt. We see the cracked earth in the plots of industrial exploitation of wheat, in the moments of the year in which the green of the wheat is more exuberant. Last year a frost destroyed the entire apple crop of this valley. This year has been the heat wave.

And yet, we continue to kill nature.

A few years ago the people of my generation were saddened because our grandchildren were going to suffer the Armageddon. Then it seemed that we had to fear ‘the worst’ because our children would suffer it. Now we worry because it will also catch up with our generation. It’s not two hundred years from now, nor a hundred years from now. There may only be one or two decades left.

And we still see it normal that the wolves have been exterminated, and now they are followed by the roe deer. We still see them only as destroyers of the (industrial) harvests of what is produced here and not as part of an ecosystem that feeds in the long term the very existence of these crops, and with it our own existence.

And all of this we think we already know when, suddenly, we find ourselves in a talk about the climate and we learn that no, that the mass media did not tell us half the truth. That the scientific community has been publishing warnings, studies, which remain in reports that remain in the background of the United Nations web pages so that we are not alarmed.

These scientific reports no longer speak of climate change but of climate destruction, and they are not based on catastrophism, but on scientific calculations, based on emissions, on temperatures. In demography.

Demographic studies seem to indicate that the richest one percent of the world’s population is responsible for half of the gases. So there are those who argue that fighting climate destruction requires a just and sustainable world that works for all.

This September, people all over the world are planning to join in demanding climate justice and emergency measures to confront the climate crisis.

In Briviesca we began with a talk on the latest evidence of this summer’s climate emergency and a summary of the latest scientific studies published by internationally recognized organizations such as the UN, and we continued with the mentioned demonstration on the 27th of September 2019.