Whether you agree with her or not, there is no doubt that Swedish Greta Tunberg is the teen everyone’s talking about right now. What started with her school striking outside the Swedish parliament on her own, led to her not only being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but also inspiring hundreds of thousands of participants, across the globe, to demonstrate and school strike, last Friday.
If Greta’s message wasn’t already clear, here are some of her quotes that inspired so many to take action against a pending climate catastrophe, that will send chills down your spine.
“You say you love your children above all else and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes,”
“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 us children…”
“We have not come here to beg world leaders to care…We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs TO the people…”
“Why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly mean nothing to our society?”
“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.”
“Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire. […] 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 not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”
“I think it is insane that people are gathered here to talk about the climate and they arrive here in private jets,”
“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,”
“I don’t want your hope,” “I want you to panic,”
This article was originally published on March 17, 2019.
Featured image: Anders Hellberg
