The Mouse that Came to English Class
St. Petersburg, Russia, ca. 1992
from Climate Change and the Oceans
I graduated with a degree in engineering in June of 2014; I had already been offered the job with Vestas, so our family headed west. We had been in Colorado for just over a year, completely immersed in our great dual adventure of mountains and wind turbines, with a group of friends from a dozen different countries, so that at dinners and on weekend hikes, Rebecca and Tommy and I felt part of a vibrant community . . . when we heard news reports in mid July, 2015, that young people in Germany were stopping traffic on all the major highways, and letting only electric cars and hybrids through.
These young people declared that they were not going to relinquish their future to the oil companies, which were never, never, never going to change. They were not going to forfeit their futures in deference to the car companies, which were too slow to change. They didn't give a damn about the banks, about the shareholders, about an economic system that was clearly racing toward ecological suicide.
The amazing thing was--all of us at Vestas followed the news day by day--this huge nonviolent protest, demanding 100% clean transportation, demanding 100% clean electrical power, and demanding it now . . . did not fade away. The kids in Germany blocked traffic day after day for a week. When the police arrived, there were no rocks, no taunts, just a polite refusal from thousands of young people to move out of the middle of a four-lane highway.
The police arrested them by the hundreds, but of course the jails filled quickly, and more kids kept coming. It was beginning to look like Montgomery, Alabama back in 1955-56: a bus boycott that just wasn't going to end until the situation was fixed.
Sometime around the middle of the second week of backed-up traffic, when not just the government, but government and industry agreed to open negotiations with a group that was now not just young people, but a growing movement of the general German population . . . we heard reports that young people were stopping traffic in London, and Marseilles (though not yet Paris), and in the Netherlands.
Nobody was yet stopping traffic in America.
When we heard that young people were stopping traffic in Saudi Arabia, demanding an end to oil, demanding a future based on solar energy, we knew that something was afoot in the world, and that whatever it was, it was just getting started.
When we heard that young people were blocking traffic in Moscow, and a day later in Saint Petersburg, and two days after that in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk and Tula and Pskov, and that the police had been restrained, and that not a rock had been thrown nor a rifle shot, we began to hope.
America finally followed, well toward the rear of the parade. The kids didn't want to flip burgers any more. They wanted to get the right training, and then they wanted to get to work. They were ready, with their sharp eyes set on the next five decades, at least. They were going to build.
from Climate Change and the Oceans
John Slade
Woodgate International
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