The world is changing before our eyes. The science is there, but there are a lot of very loud voices telling us not to believe it. Luckily, there are much more powerful voices ringing out, too. And there is perhaps no voice more powerful than Greta Thunberg’s.
On Monday, she opened the United Nations Climate Action Summit with a speech that should ring through the ages. It was a fiery condemnation of world leaders who refuse to take action against climate change.
“This is all wrong,” she began. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”
Her speech comes after millions of young people around the world took to the streets in a massive global protest that demanded world leaders take emergency action in the fight against climate change, and with any luck, Thunberg will be the catalyst that really starts the ball rolling.
