More than 50,000 Quebec students are walking out this week to express their “climate rage” and denounce the inability of governments to slow global warming.
To date, fourteen student associations, both college and university, have adopted strike mandates to participate in the call of Climate Rage, a coalition that presents itself as environmentalist and anti-capitalist. Various marches, organized in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec, should represent the high point of this mobilization this Friday.
The movement is concentrated in large centers but it has also spread to two campuses in Bas-Saint-Laurent. In Rimouski, the strike led to the suspension of classes at CEGEP and UQAR. In Quebec, the student association of the Cégep de Sainte-Foy, with 6,900 members, obtained a one-day strike mandate on Friday to participate in a mobilization for the climate in which the student association of the Cégep de Limoilou also invites its members.
Student associations from Cégep Saint-Laurent, Lionel-Groulx College, the universities of Montreal, Concordia and UQAM also voted to strike, sometimes for the week, often for a few days.
Showing your “eco-anger”
The last week of September has been synonymous with climate mobilization since the arrival of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg in Montreal in 2019. This year, the calls for action have a strong revolutionary overtone, with Climate Rage wishing to “do everything possible” to push a world “which destroys the living” to its end to see the birth, on its ashes, “a truly ecological and anti-capitalist society. »
The climatic events that have hit Quebec since the start of the year are fueling student mobilization. “Trees collapse under the weight of ice in March, forests burn in May, rivers overflow in July, the air has been unbreathable for weeks,” lists the call for mobilization launched by Climate Rage. This result, underlines the coalition, follows 15 COPs on biodiversity and 27 COPs on climate change. “Thirty years after the Rio Summit,” the appeal states, “it is clear that nothing has really changed. »
The mobilization proposes to convert the “ecoanxiety” which is affecting young people into “ecoanger”. “Peaceful actions, docile displays and negotiation are no longer enough,” writes Climate Rage. It became inevitable to increase the pressure a notch. »