No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

by Greta Thunberg

If people knew this they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m so ‘passionate about climate change’.

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.

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.

What we do or don’t do, right now, will affect my entire life, and the lives of my children and grandchildren.

And what is the point of learning facts within the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly mean nothing to our politicians and our society?

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed.

Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything, while there still was time to act.

Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.

And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

Our civilization is so fragile it is almost like a castle built in the sand. The façade is so beautiful but the foundations are far from solid.

This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.

If you say that we can ‘solve’ this crisis just by maybe increasing or lowering some taxes, phasing out coal in ten or fifteen years, putting up solar panels on new buildings or manufacturing more electric cars, then people will think we can ‘solve’ this crisis with a few political reforms, without anyone making a real effort.

author Alex Steffen, ‘Winning slowly is the same thing as losing.’

Four hundred and twenty gigatonnes of CO2 left to emit on 1 January 2018 to have a 67 per cent chance of staying below a 1.5°C global temperature rise, according to the IPCC.

I also have a dream. That governments, political parties and corporations grasp the urgency of the climate and ecological crisis and come together despite their differences – as you would in an emergency – and take the measures required to safeguard the conditions for a dignified life for everybody on earth.

Would any one of you step onto a plane if you knew it had more than a 50 per cent chance of crashing? More to the point: would you put your children on that flight?

Americans have indeed made great sacrifices to overcome terrible odds before.

Your generation is failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.