according to the AFP. In September, workers
at Amazon, Facebook and other major com-
panies walked out during the climate strikes.
And in November, the president of Emirates
airline told the BBC that the climate strikers
helped him realize “we are not doing enough.”
In December, Klaus Schwab, the founder and
CEO of the World Economic Forum, published
a manifesto calling on global business leaders
to embrace a more responsible form of capital-
ism that, among other things, forces compa-
nies to act “as a steward of the environmental
and material universe for future generations.”
Hans Vestberg, the CEO of the telecom
giant Verizon, says that companies are feeling
squeezed about climate from all sides. “It’s
growing from all the stakeholders,” he says.
“Our employees think about it much more, our
customers are talking much more about it, and
society is expecting us to show up.”
Governments are making promises too.
In the past year, more than 60 countries said
they would eliminate their carbon footprints by
- Voters in Germany, Denmark, the Neth-
erlands, Austria and Sweden—especially young
people—now list climate change as their top
priority. In May, green parties gained seats in
the European Parliament from Germany, Aus-
tria, the Netherlands and more. Those victories
helped push the new European Commission
president to promise “a Green Deal” for Eu-
rope. In the U.S., a recent Washington Post poll
found that more than three-quarters of Ameri-
cans now consider climate change a “crisis” or a
“major problem.” Even Republican lawmakers
who have long denied or dismissed climate sci-
ence are taking note. In an interview with the
Washington Examiner, Republican House mi-
nority leader Kevin McCarthy acknowledged
that his party “should be a little bit nervous”
about changing attitudes on climate.
At the individual level, ordinary people are
following Thunberg’s example. In Sweden, fly-
ing is increasingly seen as a wasteful emission
of carbon—a change of attitude captured by a
new word: flygskam, meaning “flight-shame.”
There was an 8% drop in domestic flights be-
tween January and April according to Sweda-
via, which runs the nation’s airports, and Inter-
rail ticket sales have tripled over the past two
years. More than 19,000 people have signed
a pledge swearing off air travel in 2020, and
the German railway operator Deutsche Bahn
reported a record number of passengers using
its long-distance rail in the first six months of - Swiss and Austrian railway operators
also saw upticks on their night train services
this year.
‘ADULTS DIDN’T
TAKE CARE OF THESE
PROBLEMS, SO
WE HAVE TO TAKE
CARE OF THEM’
Jaclyn Corin,
March for Our Lives organizer