Source: 100 Grannies | Uniting for a Liveable Future
| Climate heroesMiriam KashiaAfter 50 years as a keen reader on climate change and climate science, for Miriam Kashia “the pressure to step outside my comfort zone and actually do something was starting to feel explosive. I needed to do it now, but I didn’t have a clue as to what or how.” The what turned out to be 2014’s Great March for Climate Action, which Miriam – “ripe, eager and ready” – signed up for in a moment. “The experience of walking 3000 miles across America for 8 months sounding the alarm about climate transformed me from a concerned citizen to a climate action warrior,” she says. “And it changed the course of my life.” Miriam joined Iowa’s 100Grannies for a Livable Future, a climate action group founded 10 years ago to “come up with a plan to do whatever possible to help preserve a livable future on planet Earth for future generations”. Her role with the organisation, is to facilitate the ‘action team’, tackling local problems from fossil fuel pipelines to concentrated animal feeding operations. For her troubles, Miriam and several other 100Grannies activists have been arrested a number of times for non-violent direct actions. At 79, what motivates Miriam to push so hard for a better planet? “My generation, the ‘boomers’, have enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, which came at the cost of ever-expanding GDP, and the accompanying extraction and pillage of the earth’s resources and oppression of many groups of people,” she explains. “We allowed fossil fuel corporations and polluting industries to press on with business as usual, even when the consequences steadily poisoned our air and water, impacted our health, and created our climate emergency.” “We have stolen the future from those who will follow us, and for this we owe them our efforts to change the course of this peril.” To learn more 100Grannies for a Livable Future, visit 100grannies.org. Nominated by reader Mark S. Edwards |
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