From Sept. 20 to 27, youth around the world will be participating in the Global Climate Strike. Millions are expected to walk out of their schools, their workplaces and their daily routines in order to bring attention to the issue of climate change and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels.

These young people recognize that they will be the ones dealing with the complacency of today’s leaders. These young people are deciding to take matters into their own hands so that we all will have a sustainable future.

They will be discouraged by others. Those who cannot admit the facts of climate science, those lotus-eaters and impotent supporters, they will all dig their trenches while sending our youth over the sandbags. The ignorant and complacent generation believes that meaningful action is too costly, but our youth understand that there is no cost too high for their futures.

Here in Lancaster on Sept. 27 our youth will be participating in the Global Climate Strike. As this new generation comes to see the present worthlessness of democracy in the United States, as they begin to understand the classist battle that the super-rich use to pitch worker versus worker, as the forecasts of their future call for stormy weather, I am reminded of these lyrics from the revolutionary music of Rage Against the Machine: “What better place than here? What better time than now? All hell can’t stop us now.”

Timothy Runkle

Elizabethtown