environmentalists-from-sweden

"It’s insane that a 16-year-old has to cross the Atlantic in order to take a stand, but that’s how it is. It feels like we are at a breaking point. Leaders know that more eyes on them, much more pressure is on them, that they have to do something, they have to come up with some sort of solution. I want a concrete plan, not just nice words.”"

"That happens all the time. That’s basically all I hear. The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds? But I’m sure you hear that a lot, too; that you’re too young and too inexperienced. When I see all the hate you receive for that, I honestly can’t believe how you manage to stay so strong."

"Many people, especially in the US, see countries like Sweden or Norway or Finland as role models – we have such a clean energy sector, and so on. That may be true, but we are not role models. Sweden is one of the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to the highest ecological footprints, according to the WWF – if you count the consumer index, then we are among the worst per capita. In Sweden, the most common argument that we shouldn’t act is that we are such a small country with only 10 million inhabitants – we should focus more on helping other countries. That is so incredibly frustrating, because why should we argue about who or what needs to change first? Why not take the leading role?"

"Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling."

"You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard."

"You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time."

"For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis, but we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer. We are striking because we have done our homework and they have not."

"I often talk to people who say, ‘No, we have to be hopeful and to inspire each other, and we can’t tell [people] too many negative things’ . . . But, no — we have to tell it like it is. Because if there are no positive things to tell, then what should we do, should we spread false hope? We can’t do that, we have to tell the truth."

"This target is not sufficient to protect the future for children growing up today. If the EU is to make its fair contribution to stay within the carbon budget for the 2C limit then it needs a minimum of 80 percent reduction by 2030, and that includes aviation and shipping... There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge."

"Unite behind the science, that is our demand. (Thunberg told a plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)."

"We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change, because if we fail to do so than all our achievements and progress have been for nothing and all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time, because they have chosen not to listen and not to act."

"We have been told that the EU intends to improve its emission reduction targets. In the new target, the EU is proposing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 45 percent below 1990’s level by 2030. Some people say that is good or that is ambitious. But this new target is still not enough to keep global warming below 1.5 °C. This target is not sufficient to protect the future for children growing up today. If the EU is to make its fair contribution to staying within the carbon budget for the 2 °C limit, then it means a minimum of 80 percent reduction by 2030 and that includes aviation and shipping. So it is around twice as ambitious as the current proposal."

"Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire. [...] Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. 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."

"Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we all have created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money."

"I think it is insane that people are gathered here to talk about the climate and they arrive here in private jets."

"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. … 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."

"You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess. Even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to your children."

"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. [...] But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few. [...] You say that you love your children above everything else. And yet you are stealing their future."

"We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. [...] And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself?"

"We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. You've run out of excuses and we're running out of time. We've come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people."

"For 25 years, countless of people have stood in front of the United Nations Climate Change conference asking our nations’ leaders to stop the emissions. But clearly this has not worked, since the emissions just continue to rise. So I will not ask them anything. Instead, I will ask the people around the world to realize that our political leaders have failed us, because we are facing an existential threat and there is no time to continue down this road of madness."

"[...] why should I be studying for a 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 within 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?"

"Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every day. [...] 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."

"We need to change the whole capitalist system"

"Climate activist Greta Thunberg has joked that she is adopting a "net-zero" approach to cursing, an apparent response to criticism of her use of strong language at a demonstration earlier this week... On Monday, Thunberg joined other "Fridays for Future" activists at a demonstration at Festival Park in Glasgow, near the UN climate summit, where she once again mocked politicians for their inaction on climate. She said the politicians and delegates gathered at the COP talks were "pretending to take our future seriously." Over the weekend, the environmental campaigner received a rock star welcome when she was mobbed by supporters at Glasgow's Central Station... After traveling north from London by train, Thunberg appeared to be in good spirits, giving photographers a thumbs-up as she made her way through the station upon arrival, surrounded by police and fellow climate activists."

"Climate change activist Greta Thunberg implored President Biden to get serious about tackling environmental issues facing the world and suggested the new administration has not done enough in the arena during his first two months in office."

"I heard this young girl from Sweden. I really felt: Oh, there is real hope from our younger generation who really thinking this environment and these things... Our generation has created problem of climate change. When I heard Greta speaking on issue climate change I felt there was hope from younger generation. I really admire her. It was really encouraging that a younger member of human community was showing courage to fight for environment. We should let the younger generation help resolve the problem of climate change."

"Greta Thunberg says she has stopped buying new clothes but does not sit in judgment on others whose lifestyle choices are less environmentally friendly than her own, in an interview to mark her 18th birthday... Asked what she thought of celebrities who talk about the climate emergency while flying around the world, the teenager declined to criticise them, although warned that others might. “I don’t care,” she told the Sunday Times magazine. “I’m not telling anyone else what to do, but there is a risk when you are vocal about these things and don’t practise as you preach, then you will become criticised for that and what you are saying won’t be taken seriously.” Avoiding long flights is one of the most effective ways individuals can reduce their carbon emissions but the biggest impact is from not having children, according to studies. Nevertheless Thunberg was not about to tell people not to procreate. “I don’t think it’s selfish to have children,” she said. “It is not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour.” While her lifestyle is far removed from that of most western teenagers, Thunberg says she does not feel she is missing out. On clothes, she said: “The worst-case scenario I guess I’ll buy second-hand, but I don’t need new clothes. I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need any more. I don’t need to fly to Thailand to be happy. I don’t need to buy clothes I don’t need, so I don’t see it as a sacrifice.”"

"The world is speeding in the wrong direction in tackling the climate emergency, Greta Thunberg has said, before a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges for emissions cuts. Thunberg, whose solo school strike in 2018 has snowballed into a global youth movement, said there was a state of complete denial when it came to the immediate action needed, with leaders giving only distant promises and empty words."

"Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said Wednesday the foundation set up in her name would donate 150,000 euros ($175,000) to charities working to support "people on the frontlines of the climate crisis in Africa." The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the solar power-focused NGO Solar Sister, as well as advocacy group Oil Change International, would each receive 50,000 euros ($59,000) for their efforts in Africa... In August, the 17-year-old... returned to school after taking a year off to campaign to curb climate change."

"Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out. The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September. They alleged that the countries – which are legally obliged to protect children under the UN convention on the rights of the child – breached those obligations by failing to protect them from the “direct, imminent and foreseeable risk to their health and wellbeing” posed by the climate crisis."

"Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, is partnering with UNICEF on a campaign to help children around the world who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The campaign aims to stop the consequences of the pandemic, by protecting children from food shortages, strained healthcare systems, violence and lost education, according to the statement from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The campaign will also provide items like soap, masks, gloves, hygiene kits, protective equipment to medical centers in need. Thunberg donated $100,000 to UNICEF to start the campaign along with Human Act, a Danish NGO, that is matching her donation."

"I find a scrum of reporters interviewing a child in a purple puffer jacket, pink mittens, and a homemade-looking knit hat. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s Greta. She is 17, but could pass for 12. I can’t quite square the fiery speaker with the micro teen in front of me... Of course, this is emphatically wrong. Greta Thunberg has Asperger’s, which, she says, gives her pinpoint focus on climate minutiae while parrying and discarding even the smallest attempt at flattery. We stand near the Swedish Parliament house, where less than two years ago Thunberg started her Skolstrejk för klimatet, School Strike for Climate. Back then, it was just Greta, a sign, and a lunch of bean pasta in a reusable glass jar. Then it was two people, and then a dozen, and then an international movement. I mention the bravery of her speeches, but she waves me away. She wants to talk about the loss of will among the olds."

"Thunberg stated that, at the current rate, we have eight years to change everything. Thunberg’s face was controlled fury. This was the persona: an adolescent iron-willed truth teller. The Davos one-percenters clapped and rattled their Rolexes. It has become a disconcerting pattern for Thunberg appearances that would be repeated at the European Commission: Greta tells the adults they are fools and their plans are lame and shortsighted. They still give her a standing ovation. A few minutes later, she was gone and the audience dispersed into a fleet of black BMWs and Mercedes, belching diesel into the Alpine sky."

"“The phrase ‘A little child shall lead them’ has come to mind more than once,” Al Gore tells me in Davos, before sharing his favorite Greta moment. It was at the U.N. summit last fall. “She said to the assembled world leaders, ‘You say you understand the science, but I don’t believe you. Because if you did and then you continue to act as you do, that would mean you’re evil. And I don’t believe that.’” Gore shook his head in wonderment. “Wow.” He then gives a history lesson: “There have been other times in human history when the moment a morally-based social movement reached the tipping point was the moment when the younger generation made it their own. Here we are.”"

"Greta’s rise was the activist version of a perfect storm. Her ascension from bullied Swedish student to global climate icon has been driven by both a loss and a regaining of hope. It is not a coincidence that her ascent happened immediately in the aftermath of the election of Trump. It’s impossible to see a Greta-like phenomena emerging during the Obama-driven run up to the Paris climate talks, when it actually looked like nations of the world were getting their shit together to deal with global warming."

"On 20 August 2018, the first day of the school year, 15-year-old autistic school student Greta Thunberg began a solo school strike demanding government action on climate change. Instead of going to class, she printed leaflets declaring "We kids most often don’t do what you tell us to do. We do as you do. And since you grown-ups don’t give a shit about my future, I won’t either. My name is Greta and I’m in ninth grade. And I refuse school for the climate until the Swedish general election." Then she headed to the Swedish parliament building where she protested alone. Within a couple of days a handful of people began to join her, and she gave numerous interviews to journalists, making headlines around the world. Within a few months, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in hundreds of towns and cities around the world organised their own walkouts. While Thunberg as inspired many young people, some commentators have pointed out that she received much more favourable media coverage than Indigenous youth who have been using direct action and fighting police to protect biodiversity and fight climate change for years in places like Standing Rock in the United States."

"Her image has been celebrated in murals and Halloween costumes, and her name has been attached to everything from bike shares to beetles. Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year."

"So many people have made death threats against her family that she is now often protected by police when she travels. But for the most part, she sees the global backlash as evidence that the climate strikers have hit a nerve. “I think that it’s a good sign actually,” she says. “Because that shows we are actually making a difference and they see us as a threat.”"

"The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution. But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change. She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not. She has persuaded leaders, from mayors to Presidents, to make commitments where they had previously fumbled: after she spoke to Parliament and demonstrated with the British environmental group Extinction Rebellion, the U.K. passed a law requiring that the country eliminate its carbon footprint. She has focused the world’s attention on environmental injustices that young indigenous activists have been protesting for years. Because of her, hundreds of thousands of teenage “Gretas,” from Lebanon to Liberia, have skipped school to lead their peers in climate strikes around the world."

"Tokata Iron Eyes, an environmental activist, invited Thunberg, a fellow 16-year-old, to her homelands on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, after befriending her... the duo spoke at the Standing Rock high school about the burgeoning youth-led climate movement that has seen millions of people strike from school and protest against fossil-fuel projects around the world. “This is a global fight; this is not just in my home country in Sweden,” Thunberg said. “We as teenagers shouldn’t be the ones taking responsibility. It should be the ones in power.” Iron Eyes said... “No 16-year-old should have to travel the world in the first place sharing a message about having something as simple as clean water and fresh air to breathe,”... In a closing ceremony, Thunberg was gifted with a Lakota Native American name, Maphiyata echiyatan hin win, which translates as “woman who came from the heavens”."

"Thunberg's blithe disregard for the benefits of economic growth is not uncommon for people from wealthy countries who are already living in an industrialized world built by the fossil fuels of yesteryear. For them, they associate additional economic growth with access to high fashion and luxury cars. But for the billions of human beings living outside these places, fossil-fuel-driven industrialization can be the difference between life and death."

"Greta has the sense of moral clarity and laser focus that is one of the things I love and value about myself and other autistic people. We’re different — I’m brown, she’s white, and I feel more political commonality with Black and Brown young climate activists like Isra Hirsi and Autumn Peltier who are making connections between colonialism, racism and climate justice. But when I look at Greta’s unsmiling, outraged face, I feel a sense of autistic intimacy. But women are supposed to smile and be polite, don’t you know? Women and non-cis guys are supposed to be gracious and gentle and apologize and make eye contact. Autistic women and non-cis guys are often under even more pressure to keep up with traditional, neurotypical gender standards. We are not supposed to just say what the fuck we believe, call people out, and not smile doing it. We are not supposed to be autistic in public, without apology, let alone have any kind of radical politics. But Greta is."

"Greta Thunberg is one of the great truth-tellers of this or any time. Let me refresh your memories about some of her most iconic lines. To the U.N. climate negotiators in Poland last December, she said: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.”"

"To the British MPs who asked her to speak, she asked, “Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”"

"To the rich and mighty at Davos who praised her for giving them hope, she replied, “I don’t want your hope. … I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”"

"She also told them that not everyone is to blame for the climate crisis. No, she looked them in the eye and said that they were to blame. And we will always love her for that."

"People can sneer all they want at Ms. Thunberg, just as their predecessors sneered at earlier protest movements and called them a waste of time. But many of those campaigns did have an effect. Some stopped wars. Some brought about laws that outlawed racist policies. Some stopped whales from being butchered indiscriminately. No, Greta Thunberg is not going to save the planet on her own. But at least she is holding those in a position to do something about climate change to account, speaking hard truths many others are afraid to. She is not an attention seeker. She is a young person frightened to death about the state of the world she is inheriting. Sure, mumble that she is a disillusioned naif if you wish. I prefer to think of Ms. Thunberg as something else: a powerful and vital new voice in the climate debate. And someone who deserves support, encouragement and thanks from her fellow global citizens."

"Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who started the Friday school strikes, has graduated from secondary education with 14 As and three Bs. She got these excellent grades despite being absent from class far more than most of her followers: As the leader of a movement, an international celebrity, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, she traveled extensively during her last school year."

"The contrast between Thunberg’s academic achievement and her attendance record raises important questions. What kind of example does she set for the millions of kids who skipped school to participate in the climate protests? Should attendance be compulsory and, if so, why should it be required for someone like Thunberg? In Sweden, nine years of full-time education are mandatory and home-schooling is practically illegal..."