No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

by Greta Thunberg

To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself. Your silence is almost worst of all. The future of all the coming generations rests on your shoulders. Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.

Nor does hardly anyone ever mention that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, with about 200 species going extinct every single day.

Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.

We are about to sacrifice our civilization for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue to make enormous amounts of money. We are about to sacrifice the biosphere so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.

hope is something you have to earn.

Around the year 2030, 10 years, 259 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we will set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.

the bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty.

Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.

The real danger is when companies and politicians are making it look like real action is happening, when in fact almost nothing is being done, apart from clever accounting and creative PR.

when you talk in public you should start with something personal or emotional to get everyone’s attention.

richer countries need to do their fair share and get down to ‘real zero’ emissions much faster, and then help poorer countries do the same, so that people in less fortunate parts of the world can raise their living standards.