Greta Thunberg is not here for your excuses.
Thunberg recently discussed her anger with the way politicians have pretended to care about climate change and she did not hold back. At a protest in Stockholm, she said,
“I have been on the road and visited numerous places and met people from all over the globe. I can say that it looks nearly the same everywhere I have been: The climate crisis is ignored by people in charge, despite the science being crystal clear.”
She continued,
“We don’t want to hear one more politician say that this is important but afterward do nothing to change it. We don’t want more empty words from people pretending to take our future seriously. It shouldn’t be up to us children and teenagers to make people wake up around the world. The ones in charge should be ashamed.”
She later reiterated her point, telling Rolling Stone,
“It seems like the people in power have given up. They say it’s too hard — it’s too much of a challenge. But that’s what we are doing here. We have not given up because this is a matter of life and death for countless people.”
And even when politicians *do* appear to take climate change seriously, Thunberg points out that it’s simply not enough. She specifically calls out the Green New Deal (spearheaded by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and said,
“If you look at the graphs to stay below the 1.5 degree Celsius global average temperature and you read the Green New Deal, you see that it doesn’t add up… The Green New Deal is not in line with our carbon-dioxide budget.”
Greta Thunberg has been fighting for people to take climate change seriously for years now, and while she’s finally getting some attention, it’s not quite the kind she wants. The 17-year-old activist has made it clear that she doesn’t care about personal fame, about magazine covers — she simply just wants to enact change. Because, according to Thunberg, this is life or death.
“Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.”
Still not convinced about the seriousness of climate change? Let National Geographic break it down in simple terms for you here.
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