Become an Activist
Join the Movement for Climate Justice!

Over the four seasons of Blog, Engage, Act!, we have covered several important issues relating to the climate crisis and our activism for climate justice. We have endeavoured to make our ideas and concerns, as well as the activist scene around us tangible – starting with a reality check on whether we are actually winning, so as to a look inside the movement and our organisation, our plans and the challenges we are up against. For those who have followed the articles in which we have shared our different experiences and perspectives as activists, the most important question is: why should I become a climate justice activist?  

By Matilde Alvim

Why You Should Become an Activist

The answer is quite simple. You should become an activist because our house is on fire. You should become involved in the movement for climate justice because an altogether concrete deadline is looming: In the case of Portugal, we have to reduce our emissions by some 75% within 9 years. You should become an activist because all the background noise produced by the government's plans to reduce emissions notwithstanding, droughts, fires and injustices continue. You should become an activist because society is distracted while we are on the brink of civilisational collapse. You should become an activist and be guided by the breath of anger against injustice because the big oil companies have known about global warming for decades and have deliberately withheld information. People must fight to reduce 50% of emissions worldwide and bury the system. You are a human being. So the movement for climate justice needs you to win.

Sometimes the scope of the problem we are up against can cause apathy, fear or even reluctance. History however teaches us that great social changes have been brought about over time because people fought for them. The climate crisis is no different: history is looking at us and we will determine whether we choose collapse or climate justice.  We need not go far back in fact to see that activism is bearing some - still tentative - fruit. In 2018, the Stop the Bore campaign succeeded in stopping drilling for oil off Alejzur in the Algarve. This was a defining moment for me also, as I joined the movement for climate justice in response  to that call. I have been mobilised through an announcement of a demonstration in a newspaper to this day. In 2019, Camp in Gás was organised in the village of Bajouca against the exploration of gas deposits. Activists from all over Europe gathered for several days in Leiria for training courses and an action of civil disobedience. I took part in the Camp in Gás and the strength and synergy I felt there was amazing. The village community supported the whole action and taught us the meaning of determination and resilience.  is how Climáximo's summary put it shortly afterwards. The drilling for gas finally ended a few months ago.  

The Climate Justice Movement Needs People Like You

The climate justice movement needs activists with many different types of knowledge and skills. People who write mobilising texts; others who know how to make or source the best materials; people who take photographs and edit inspiring videos; people who can work with computers; and also people from the world of art and music who know that systemic change can only be achieved with a cultural and artistic revolution; people of all ages and with much or little experience who already know a lot or almost nothing about the climate crisis; people from different social backgrounds who have been mobilised for the struggle in very different ways, whether through the real threat of drilling or through the shock that a film about the climate crisis can cause - like Alice from Climáximo and FFF Portugal, who tells me she wanted to get involved after seeing Leonardo Dicaprio's Before the Flood. In a word, the movement needs people who have the determination and courage in them to realise and accept that only we can change course from the impending collapse.  

For all the fear and uncertainty, society can choose to treat climate change as a crisis too and change everything before the climate changes everything for us. It is completely up to us to reduce emissions, and it is completely up to us to set up a programme that changes everything - the way we produce, transport, care for and feed ourselves, through the creation of hundreds of thousands of public climate jobs that will enable a just transition. We have the power to stop the violence and build a society based on social justice, care, and public services -- not for profit. We know that ecological conditions may be unfavourable in the future, but we can choose to survive by building a new society, or else perish in the system we live in.

After these months of writing, reading and sharing, only one conclusion can be drawn, and that is to join the fight for climate justice.