Greta Thunberg Held Nothing Back at the UN Climate Action Summit

If you aren’t sure who Greta Thunberg is, she is a 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist. She is best known for bringing global awareness to the lack of action towards climate change. She speaks with almost no fear in regards to calling out global leaders for not bringing this action against the climate crisis. A year ago, she started a globally-run school strike called “Fridays For Future”. In comparison to the beginning of these strikes, the participation has grown rapidly. 

Greta Thunberg has taken a year off of school to actively participate in conferences and meetings to demand better climate action. She began her journey in 2018 after addressing issues with the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference. On Monday, Sep. 23, she went full circle by attending and speaking at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit.  

Getting Thunberg to the summit required a lot of accommodation to find her the best possible way to travel overseas without releasing any emissions. She refuses to fly so the solution involved her being granted a trip on a yacht across the Atlantic Ocean with zero-emissions. 

Once Thunberg arrived and began speaking it was clear that she was angry with the lack of concern for the state of the world’s climate emergency. While being visibly frustrated Greta Thunberg leaned fully into her usual condemnation against the world’s leaders. Edging towards tears of anger she stated, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you.” She is merely 16 years old and is being relied on to speak at conferences as large-scale as the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. This exasperation of being relied on at such a young age was extended as she then stated, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones.”

She blames leaders even further by saying, “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.” With over 5 million combined followers and the continuation of being a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, Greta Thunberg has gained the support of all those in favor of emergency and immediate action on climate change. 

Thunberg gave multiple facts and numbers within her speech to back up the science of climate change and why action is needed but proceeds to say that, “there will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable, and you are too immature to tell it like it is.” 

Her statement, “If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you,” has gone viral on multiple social media platforms. Her name is buzzing and people are learning that this 16-year-old Swedish girl is fighting the largest battle against the biggest leaders, and shows little to no fear doing so.  

Just to add to her powerful speech, an announcement was made that Thunberg and 15 other children had decided to file a lawsuit against the five of the world’s nations that are the largest carbon emitters. These nations are Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey. 

“The world is waking up. And change is coming whether you like it or not.” 

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• change
• climate
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