This September, the world is taking a stand on climate change, and it's going to be like nothing you've ever seen before.
It starts with the kids. This generation of school students is living at an unprecedented time in human history, with each year in their short lives hotter than the last, with ice at the poles of our planet continuing to melt at an alarming rate, with Earth's climate plunged into a chaos we've never experienced.
No wonder our youngest generation has just about had it with the greed, inaction, and lack of political will displayed by adults in power - the ones who could do something about stopping destructive carbon emissions and limiting global warming to below 1.5°C.
From 20 to 27 September 2019, millions of young people across the world will be taking their stand on climate change with strikes and protests, and it's our responsibility as adults to support them in every way we can.
"We feel a lot of adults haven't quite understood that we young people won't hold off the climate crisis ourselves," the young activists who are mobilising this mass resistance wrote back in May.
"Sorry if this is inconvenient for you. But this is not a single-generation job. It's humanity's job."
There's more than a strike on the cards, too. Before people take to the streets, you'll be hearing about climate change a lot more than you're used to - not just from us, but from mainstream media everywhere.
ScienceAlert has joined the Covering Climate Now initiative co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. It's a commitment by more than 200 media outlets across the world to strengthen our focus on climate change from 16 to 23 September, ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.
And we won't stop there; we'll be doing our own version of a digital strike on 20 September.
True to our name, ScienceAlert is a science news publication, and we're fully independent from any of the financial interests that have marred public debate on climate change action for decades.
If there are any 'sides' to be picked here, we science journalists always side with the science. And the scientific case for human-induced climate change is crystalline.
Earth and climate scientists the world over have come out in strong support of the student protests, making it clear that the young activists' "concerns are justified and supported by the best available science. The current measures for protecting the climate and biosphere are deeply inadequate."
However, as catastrophic as it all sounds, it doesn't mean humanity is helpless.
"Our scientific understanding of currently observed and projected future climate impacts clearly calls for the transformation of our energy systems and our society at all scales and across all sectors in order to rapidly decarbonise our economy," an open letter signed by hundreds of scientists stated in March in support of school climate strikes.
"Those who oppose specific policies have an obligation to offer viable and effective alternatives at a scale commensurate with the problem. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away."
If you're one of those people unwilling to accept this reality, you can comfortably end up on the wrong side of history, shouting about volcanoes and natural planetary changes, while the rest of humanity works to find a way out of this mess.
"Together, we will sound the alarm and show our politicians that business as usual is no longer an option. The climate crisis won't wait, so neither will we," states the Global Climate Strike website.
That's why we're proud to announce that on 20 September 2019, ScienceAlert has pledged to not do business as usual. You won't get any of the exciting science news you're used to seeing in your feeds every day.
But we won't stay silent, either.
While our editorial team takes the day off to join climate strikes across the country here in Australia and over in the US and UK, our homepage will be filled exclusively with climate stories we're the most passionate about sharing. Stay tuned.
