Currently — September 26, 2023: Green New Deal for Schools kicks off

The weather, currently.

There’s a new Green New Deal in town — this time, it’s for schools.

Over the past five years or so, the Sunrise Movement has led the push for a Green New Deal in the US — and has redefined what intersectional climate campaigns can look like. Now, the youth-led org has decided to focus on their peers — in an attempt to strengthen climate justice efforts in school districts across the country.

“We are prepared to do whatever it takes,” Portland, Oregon-based Sunrise Movement organizer Adah Crandall, 17, told the Guardian.

The new campaign focuses on electrifying school buses, providing sustainable and healthy food — for free — to all students, and providing pathways to climate-focused jobs after graduation, among other demands.

Earlier this summer, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child specified the obligation that countries have to protect children’s right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment — explicitly affirming the urgency to act amid the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution. In the US, a group of kids in the state of Montana won the first-ever state level constitutional lawsuit on climate change earlier this year.

The Green New Deal for Schools campaign needs help signing up new high schools, so if you’re connected to one, sign up here to help support the effort.

— Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

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