Meet the Sixteen-Year-Old Activist Taking Climate Change into Her Own Hands
Though she be little, she is fierce. At the age of sixteen, one girl from Sweden is making waves globally, and demands our attention. When she was just fifteen, Greta Thunberg stood before a room of global leaders at the United Nations Climate Conference in December of 2018 and delivered a powerful address demanding our governments strive for a cleaner, greener future. Greta originally sparked a conversation that August when she protested the Swedish Parliament and demanded action. On August 20, Thunberg pledged not to attend school until the Swedish general election on September 9, 2018. Each school day, instead of attending classes Greta sat outside the Swedish Parliament building with a sign that read “school strike for climate” until the school day was over. After the election, Greta was still adamant to be sure her voice was heard and continues to strike each Friday during school hours. On October 31, Greta gave a speech in London at the Declaration of Rebellion in Parliament Square right as a “massive climate rebellion” against the UK government began. Since then, the teenager has asserted herself as a political activist seeking a more positive future for her generation and for those to come, and she urges us to do the same.
“In the year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask about you,” Thunberg said of her outlook on the future. “Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there was still time to act.” The teenager realizes the damaging consequences of economic greed outweighing the need for a sustainable future, and along with the help of a few million schoolchildren around the globe, she aims to make politicians aware of her intent to put an end to it. Since her protest in August and her UN speech in December, the young activist has turned to the global youth for support. She has organized school walkouts for the protest of climate crisis that have sparked a worldwide conversation. If politicians and leaders will turn their backs on the very people they lead, Greta wants to make them watch her and her peers incite change for the better. “…if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.”
The Swedish teen started off 2019 by being invited to speak in January at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Her impact on a global scale took off in just a matter of months, and Greta intends to keep it going. Many strikes and school walkouts have occurred the world over since her original protest back in August, organized by students in 123 countries – most recently on Friday, March 15. The biggest walkout organized yet, Greta encouraged students to skip school to demand attention for the issue at hand. Students across America walked out on their schools in masses, wielding homemade signs and chanting for change. In New Zealand, students at Nelson College even performed a traditional Haka dance at their strike. In Greta’s home country of Sweden, the activist credits the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s protests for gun reform in Parkland, Florida for inspiring her walkouts. From Australia to Uganda, and countless countries in between, Greta and her generation are taking their future into their own hands – ensuring we all have a future to look forward to.
Leaders in Norway recently nominated Thunberg for a Nobel Peace Prize, crediting her activism to the prevention of potential wars, conflict, and refugee crises. “Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace,” Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy Andre Ovstegard. Should Thunberg win the award, she will be the youngest person in history to receive it since Malala Yousafzai at age seventeen.
Over and over again, Greta is proving that all it really takes to incite change is just a few people willing to talk – and to make the world listen.
Strike Out,
Writer: Giselle Parks
Editor: Savannah Tindall
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