Hundreds gathered at the Arizona State Capitol on Friday afternoon to join a world-wide, youth-led movement to draw attention to climate change and call on elected officials to take action against it.
While the march in Phoenix was organized by two local high school students, it was attended by young activists and supporters from ASU, ASU alumni and local lawmakers, all of whom demanded action from elected officials.
The Arizona Climate Strike was co-led by two Phoenix area high school students, including BASIS Phoenix Central charter school junior Aditi Narayanan, 16, who said the goal of the demonstration was to spur community involvement and that she was moved to take action after observing the deleterious impacts of climate change in her community.
“A lot of people think climate change is this distant idea of some glacier, melting 2000 miles away," Narayanan said. "But I realized the impact on my community. I noticed the summers were getting hotter, I noticed the drought especially in a lot of agricultural communities and I noticed extreme weather conditions."
The demonstration comes amid debates in Washington, where some Democratic lawmakers are pushing a sweeping environmental regulatory measure known as "The Green New Deal," and as the Trump administration continues to roll back environmental regulations.
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The protest in Phoenix draws from the "climate strike" movement, which originated in Sweden with a single protest by a then-15-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg in August 2018.
Thunberg has continued to protest every Friday, and has since given a now-viral speech before the UN chastising adults for a lack of action on climate change and has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
From that lone protest, the movement exploded, gaining traction across Europe and the U.S. as local, state and federal leaders began to hash out policy answers to climate questions. On Friday, it arrived at the Arizona Capitol, along with hundreds of other capitols around the world.
Climate change activism has seen a groundswell of grassroots non-profit groups, like Defend Our Future, a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group.
ASU's chapter of Defend Our Future attended the Phoenix strike to support the young students. Freshman political science major Phoebe Wells, who attended the march with the ASU chapter, said that the organization wanted to show that younger students are passionate about environmental issues.
"We have a really bad reputation for not having great political advocacy," Wells said. "Even though these issues might not pertain directly to college students right now, climate change is going to affect everyone."
That demand for change is one of the defining principles Thunberg shared in a speech she gave in Davos, Switzerland, calling on economists to help solve the problem.
"Some say we should not engage in activism," Thunberg said in her speech. "Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?"
