Last month, from September 22nd to September 29th the 16th annual Climate Week NYC was held across all five boroughs. Climate Week NYC brought thousands of people together to celebrate climate-related accomplishments and focus on increasing recognition of climate change worldwide. Throughout the week over 900 events including workshops, group discussions, and panels took place highlighting climate injustices across the globe. Climate Week NYC was hosted by Climate Group; an international non-profit organization.
Climate Week NYC 2024 kicked off with Helen Clarkson, the CEO of Climate Group delivering a powerful speech outlining the event’s overarching theme, “It’s time.” Clarkson emphasized the importance and urgency of climate justice worldwide and brought together five key principles to direct the focus for the week. The five key “It’s Time” principles Clarkson outlined for all attendees included:
- It’s Time to Put People First
- It’s Time to Pay Up
- It’s Time to Listen to Citizens
- It’s Time to Be Honest with Ourselves
- It’s Time to Have the Difficult Discussions About Fossil Fuels
Climate Week NYC was only seven days but many attendees were able to work on applying these five principles to all of the working sessions they attended during the event. This year’s Climate Week was filled with plenty of climate activism as well as a key focus on bringing recognition to climate injustices. The overall goal of Climate Week is to promote climate change so that people of all ages can learn about topics such as global warming and other major issues affecting our planet. Climate Week aims to educate attendees by having open conversations and informing people about the latest happenings on climate change.
With the event taking place here in New York City we asked several Fieldston students what they knew about climate change. Many gave different answers. Luca Hoffman, a Fieldston Senior said, “The earth heating up and fracking” were the main climate injustices he knew about. Laney Kabaker, a Freshman talked about the impact of climate change and its potential impact with recent weather occurrences such as hurricane Milton that decimated the Southeast, “Climate Change is causing more frequent natural disasters such as storms and droughts, which are killing people as well as negatively impacting our environment.” These students are each familiar with different climate injustices, which is why it is important to have meaningful conversations about climate change with each other.
