There was a certain irony in the fact that on September 20 – autumn in most people’s minds – the temperature in Glasgow rose to 26 degrees. It was as if the Holy Spirit had set out to stress the reality of the climate crisis.
As its ambassador for the diocese of Argyll and the Isles, I had been asked to join SCIAF’s staff and volunteers on the climate march in Glasgow. So yes, I was wearing the SCIAF T-shirt, but as vice chair of Justice and Peace Scotland, I held also aloft the Justice and Peace banner with our campaigns and communications officer, Frances Gallagher. This was no time for demarcation – thousands of young people were giving up a day at school to march for their future, and we had to let them know that much of the adult world really does support them.
‘Giving up a day at school’? Were we taken for a ride by all those children in the wave of protest that swept across the world?
Very definitely not. Walking for two hours under an unseasonable sun with earnest young people is a wonderful cure for cynicism. These kids know what they’re talking about. They understand the science. They are afraid for their future. And the young parents pushing buggies or carrying infants in slings on their backs? Their hearts are sore that the bright future they had hoped for those little ones might quite literally crash and burn.
When I was at school, Kennedy and Khrushchev had their Cuban stand-off and we planned how we would spend our final four minutes before these two statesmen pressed their red buttons. The risk was there, our fear was real, so I understand the anxiety in the hearts and minds of today’s youngsters.
But while a couple of intense diplomatic phone calls averted nuclear catastrophe in my youth, the task of warding off climate catastrophe is going to take much more effort – and as Greta Thunberg has told political leaders around the world, culminating in her angry words this week at the UN, that effort has to happen right now.
Yes, there was a bit of a carnival atmosphere and we had the ubiquitous samba band at our backs. There was banter and chanting and all the clever banners and placards – much the most effective was the repeated ‘There’s no Planet B’. There was lots of support from office workers standing precariously on sandstone ledges to wave us on during their lunch breaks, lots of groups in side streets taking a few minutes to add their own chants to ours. And the police were truly wonderful.
But this wasn’t a day out; wasn’t a skive from school. It was a genuine cry for action, for an end to the procrastination, the profiteering and the denials. It was a cry for a future. And I pray that our united voices will grant that future to the baby who slept innocently on his mother’s back ahead of us on that momentous march.