How Did Swedish Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Get Everyone to Listen and Pay Attention? Read the full transcript of Greta Thunberg's speeches with your students! From How Dare You to Years of Blah Blah Blah, and No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference!
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish activist who, at age 15, began protesting outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018 about the need for immediate action to combat climate change. Her "school strike for the climate" began attracting media attention and she has since become an outspoken climate activist. In response to the publicity, the school strike for climate movement began in November 2018 and spread globally after the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in December the same year. Wiki
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Hello, and thank you.
‘Climate change is not only a threat, it is above all an opportunity to create a healthier, greener and cleaner planet which will benefit all of us.’ [ironically quoting politicians]
‘We must seize this opportunity - we can achieve a win-win in both ecological conservation and high quality development.’
‘Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower to make the changes that the world needs.'
‘We need to walk the talk - if we do this together, we can do this.’
‘When I say “climate change”, what do you think of? I think of jobs - green jobs - green jobs’.
‘We must find a smooth transition towards a low-carbon economy.’
‘There is no planet B’ there is no planet blah - blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
‘This is not about some expensive politically-correct green-assed bunny-hugging or’ blah blah blah.
‘Build back better’ blah blah blah.
‘Green economy’ blah blah blah.
‘Net zero by 2050' blah blah blah.
‘Net zero’ blah blah blah.
‘Climate neutral’ blah blah blah.
This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words - words that sound great, but so far have led to no action.
Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.
Of course we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve now had 30 years of blah bah blah and where has that led us?
Over 50% of all our CO2 emissions have occurred since 1990, and a third since 2005.
All this while the media is reporting what the leaders say that they are going to do instead of what they are actually doing.
and they are not holding leaders accountable for their action, or rather inaction.
and don’t get me wrong, we can still do this - change is not only possible but urgently necessary, but not if we go on like today.
They say they want solutions, but you cannot solve a crisis that you do not fully understand
and you cannot balance a budget if you do not count all the numbers.
And as long as we ignore equity and historic emissions, and as long as we don’t include consumption of imported goods, burning of biomass etc etc, and as long as clever accounting is one of the most efficient ways of reducing emissions, we won’t get anywhere.
And the climate crisis is of course only a symptom of a much larger crisis - the sustainability crisis, the social crisis - a crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond - a crisis based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and therefore have a right to exploit and steal other people’s land and resources - and it is very naive to believe that we can solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it.
Right now we are still very much speeding in the wrong direction.
2021 is currently projected to experience the second highest emission rise ever.
Only about 2% of government recovery spending has been allocated to clean energy measures
And according to a new report by the UN, global emissions are expected to rise by 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels.
Our leaders’ intentional lack of action is a betrayal towards all present and future generations.
The people in power cannot claim that they are trying because they are clearly not, as they continue opening up brand new coal mines, oilfields and pipelines, pretending to have ambitious climate policies while granting new oil licences and exploring enormous future oil fields, and shamelessly congratulating themselves while still failing to come up with even the bare minimum and long-overdue funding to help the most vulnerable countries deal with the impact of the climate crisis.
If this is what they consider to be climate action, then we don’t want it.
They invite cherry-picked young people to meetings like this to pretend that they are listening to us.
But they are not - they are clearly not listening to us - and they never have - just look at the numbers - look at the statistics - the emissions are still rising - the science doesn’t lie.
But, of course, we can still turn this around - it is entirely possible.
It will take drastic annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
And as we don’t have the technological solutions that alone can deliver anything close to that, that means we will have to change.
We can no longer let the people in power to decide what is politically possible or not.
We can no longer let the people in power to decide what hope is.
Hope is not passive.
Hope is not blah blah blah.
Hope is telling the truth.
Hope is taking action.
And hope always comes from the people.
And we the people - we want a safe future, we want real climate action and we want climate justice.
Did you hear me?
What do we want? [Audiance chanting: Climate justice] When do we want it? [Now]
...
The leaders like to say ‘we can do this’. They obviously don’t mean it, but we do - we can do this.
I’m absolutely convinced that we can.
But it starts with the people - it starts with facing the reality of the situation as uncomfortable as it may be.
It starts with taking action, and it starts now.
What do we want? [Audiance: Climate justice] When do we want it? [Now]
...
Thank you
All Greta Thunberg Speech Transcripts
"When I was about 8 years old I first heard about something called climate change or global warming. Apparently that was something humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources.
I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans who are an animal species among others could be capable of changing the Earth's climate. Because if we were and if it was really happening we wouldn't be talking about anything else. As soon as you turn on the TV everything would be about that. Headlines, radio, newspapers, you would never read or hear about anything else. As if there was a world war going on.
But no one ever talked about it. If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn't it made illegal? To me that did not add up, it was too unreal.
So when I was 11 I became ill. I fell into depression. I stopped talking and I stopped eating. In two months I lost about 10 kilos of weight. Later on I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome OCD and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think it is necessary. Now is one of those moments.
For those of us who are on the spectrum, almost everything is black or white. We aren't very good at lying and we usually don't enjoy participating in the social game that the rest of you seem so fond of. I think in many ways that we artistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. Especially when it comes to the sustainability crisis, where everyone keeps saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all. And yet they just carry on like before.
I don't understand that, because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don't. We have to change.
Rich countries like Sweden need to start reducing emissions by at least 15 percent every year. And that is so that we can stay below a two degree warming target. Yet, as the IPCC have recently demonstrated, aming instead for 1.5 degrees Celsius would significantly reduce the climate impacts. But we can only imagine what that means for reducing emissions.
You would think the media and every one of our leaders would be talking about nothing else, but they never even mention it. Nor does anyone ever mention the greenhouse gases already locked in the system. Nor that air pollution is hiding a warming, so that when we stop burning fossil fuels, we already have an extra level of warming, perhaps as high as 0.5 to 1.1 degrees Celsius.
Furthermore does hardly anyone speak about the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. With up to 200 species going extinct every single day. That the extinction rate is today between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than what is seen as normal.
Nor does hardly anyone ever speak about the aspect of equity or climate justice, clearly stated everywhere in the Paris agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale. That means that rich countries need to get down to zero emissions within 6 to 12 years with today's emission speed. And that is so that people in poorer countries can have a chance to heighten the standard of living by building some of the infrastructure that we have already built, such as roads, schools, hospitals, clean drinking water, electricity and so on.
Because how can we expect countries like India or Nigeria to care about the climate crisis if we who already have everything don't care even a second about it, or our actual commitments to the Paris agreement. So why are we not reducing our emissions? Why are they in fact still increasing? Are we knowingly causing a mass extinction? Are we evil?
No of course not. People keep doing what they do because the vast majority doesn't have a clue about the actual consequences of our everyday life. And they don't know that rapid change is required. We all think we know and we all think everybody knows. But we don't. Because how could we?
If there really was a crisis and if this crisis was caused by our emissions, you would at least see some signs. Not just flooded cities, tens of thousands of dead people and whole nations leveled to piles of torn down buildings. You would see some restrictions. But no. And no one talks about it.
There are no emergency meetings, no headlines, no breaking news. No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. Even most climate scientists or green politicians keep on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy.
If I live to be 100, I will be alive in the year 2103. When you think about the future today, you don't think beyond the year 2050. By then, I will in the best case, not even have lived half of my life. What happens next?
The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children or grandchildren, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn't do anything while this still was time to act?
What we do or don't do right now will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren. What we do or don't do right now, me and my generation can't undo in the future.
So when school started in August of this year I decided that this was enough. I sat myself down on the ground outside the Swedish parliament. I school striked for the climate.
Some people say that I should be in school instead. 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.
And why should I be studying for if future that soon will be no more? When no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system, when the most important facts, given by the finest science of that same school system, clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society?
Some people say that Sweden is just a small country and that it doesn't matter what we do. But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not coming to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could all do together if you wanted to.
Now we're almost at the end of my talk and this is where people usually start talking about hope - solar panels, wind power, circular economy and so on.
But I'm not going to do that. We've had 30 years of pep talking and selling positive ideas and I'm sorry but it doesn't work. Because if it would have, the emissions would have gone down by now. They haven't. And yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.
So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then hope will come.
Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can't save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed.
Everything needs to change. And it has to start today.
Thank you!"
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