Cameron: When Climate Leaders Are Childish, Children Must Be Leaders

In a world where climate leaders are childish, children like Sweden’s Greta Thunberg show up as leaders, acclaimed Canadian journalist and author Silver Donald Cameron argues in a post for The Green Interview.

“We have not come here to beg world leaders to care,” Thunberg declared during last year’s United Nations climate conference in Katowice, Poland. “They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not. Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.”

What started as the 15-year-old Thunberg’s school strike in front of the national legislature in Stockholm has spread across Europe and around the world, Cameron notes, and “Thunberg is only one.” He cites Stella Bowles, 14, fighting fecal pollution in Nova Scotia’s LaHave River, Rupert and Franny Yakelashek advocating for environmental rights in western Canada, and the 21 youth plaintiffs in Juliana v. the United States, a landmark court case subject to non-stop delaying tactics by the Trump White House and the Obama administration before it.

Cameron says he’ll be discussing children’s lawsuits with “laughing and relentless” Filipino lawyer Antonio Oposa Jr. as part of his online course with Cape Breton University, Green Rights: The Human Right to a Healthy World, which debuts today. “You can join the course from anywhere on Earth,” he writes.