Five ways Labour can learn from the young climate strikers

Across the UK today, thousands of young people will take to the streets calling for climate justice. As Labour conference begins, there are a number of lessons we can learn from their movement.

To achieve net zero carbon by 2030, the most powerful thing we can do is build political ambition to achieve climate justice. The strikers are doing exactly that, channeling the fearless energy that has come from decades of climate mobilisations predominantly from Global South communities. They have been on the frontlines, unwavering in their calls that it is 1.5 to stay alive and two degrees is murder for them.

For Labour to be the party with the vision to navigate the climate crisis, we must build on the fearless leadership of the youth strikers and take action. Here are five ways we can start to do just that.

1. Recognising the political leadership of young people.

Firstly, we need to give 16-year-olds the vote. The idea that young people are too ill-informed to participate in our democracy has been shattered by the organising of the youth strikers. Let’s go even further and pass a UK-wide version of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, ensuring policy makers recognise the rights of young people and future generations to a stable environment.

2. Community organising.

The climate strikers have reminded us that mass grassroots mobilisation is how we will win. We must increase our support for Labour’s community organisers, who are rebuilding trust with disenfranchised communities across the UK. Labour’s green industrial revolution offers us a framework to use the climate transition to call for a wholesale reconfiguration to our economy. By asking communities and workers how a green industrial revolution can transform their lives for the better, Labour will be led by a movement invested in a vision of climate justice that is defined by their needs and their solutions.

3. Climate reparations.

Despite the lack of honest education about the British Empire, the youth strikers have shown a poignant understanding of the relationship between the climate crisis and the UK’s colonial history. Colonialism was the original extractivist economic policy upon which modern capitalism is built. Capitalism’s insatiable pursuit of extractive growth has escalated us to climate breakdown. The climate crisis gives the UK a unique opportunity to reflect on its history in the world and to rebalance power dynamics through climate reparations and paying our climate debt. We must use this internationalist framework to ensure the climate transition can keep racial and class justice at its heart.

4. Holding fossil fuel companies to account.

Even a cursory glance at the youth strikers placards demonstrates their understanding that the fossil fuel industry is a rogue industry. Almost every fossil fuel company spends more on marketing each year than they do on low carbon investment, and none of them are compliant with the Paris agreement. They have no place at Labour Party conference fringes until this changes. Let’s be bold and address this fact by: stopping subsidies to fossil fuel companies and funnelling the subsidies to renewable infrastructure; refusing to license any new oil and gas fields in the North Sea; and divesting local government pension funds and parliamentary pension funds from fossil fuel companies.

5. A Green New Deal that puts workers at the heart of the just transition.

In calling for a Green New Deal, the youth strikers join Labour for a Green New Deal in recognising climate action as a vehicle through which we can achieve wider social justice. The climate crisis offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to fundamentally rebalance the relationship between labour and capital; bringing energy into public hands and creating worker-led ownership structures.

The youth strikers have understood that building a green economy will transform and improve the lives of the many. The just transition to a green economy must have workers at its heart. The trade unions founded our party to continue protecting our workers’ interests; we must ensure they are at the heart of defining the transition that can create higher waged, unionised jobs within the renewable sector amongst others.

Today, inspired by their hope, I’ll be joining the youth strikers on the streets of Brighton to call for climate justice. On the following day, I’ll be joining many of you at conference. We must follow in the footsteps of the strikers, whose convictions should be reflected in our decisions there.