Climate Activist Greta Thundberg: TIME Magazine's 'Person of the Year'

TIME’s Editor-in-chief on why Greta Thunberg is the Person of the Year

BY EDWARD FELSENTHAL

It began with a story line familiar to every parent of every generation in every corner of the globe: an indignant teenager and a sudden burst of rebellion. It became one of the most unlikely and surely one of the swiftest ascents to global influence in history. Over the course of little more than a year, a 16-year-old from Stockholm went from a solitary protest on the cobblestones outside her country’s Parliament to leading a worldwide youth movement; from a schoolkid conjugating verbs in French class to meeting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations and receiving audiences with Presidents and the Pope; from a solo demonstrator with a hand-painted slogan (Skolstrejk för Klimatet) to inspiring millions of people across more than 150 countries to take to the streets on behalf of the planet we share.

Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Greta Thunberg. Marshaling “Fridays for Future” protests throughout Europe; thundering, “How dare you!” at the world’s most powerful leaders in her viral U.N. speech; leading some 7 million climate strikers across the world in September and tens of thousands more in Madrid in early December, Thunberg has become the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet—and the avatar of a broader generational shift in our culture that is playing out everywhere from the campuses of Hong Kong to the halls of Congress in Washington.

As Isabella Prata, the mother of two climate strikers in São Paulo, puts it, “Greta is an image of all of this generation.”

Thunberg demands action, and though far too many key measures are still moving in the wrong direction, there are nascent signs that action is coming. Corporate commitments to sustainable growth and net-zero emissions are on the rise. More than 60 countries have pledged to have a net carbon footprint of zero by 2050. American primary voters, especially in states beset by wildfires and flooding, are suddenly giving presidential candidates an earful on climate change. In Austria’s September elections, the Green Party more than tripled its support at the expense of the Social Democrats, a development a leader of the Social Democrats attributed to Thunberg—just before he resigned. Even as China burns half the world’s coal, it too is changing. It’s now home to roughly 45% of the electric cars and 99% of the electric buses in the world.

Thunberg stands on the shoulders—and at the side—of hundreds of thousands of others who’ve been blockading the streets and settling the science, many of them since before she was born. She is also the first to note that her privileged background makes her “one of the lucky ones,” as she puts it, in a crisis that disproportionately affects poor and indigenous communities. But this was the year the climate crisis went from behind the curtain to center stage, from ambient political noise to squarely on the world’s agenda, and no one did more to make that happen than Thunberg.

The CLIMATE KIDS are Coming! Young People Fighting for Their Future

The Climate Kids are Coming
With a Green New Deal and Student Strikes for Climate, will young people save us yet?

 By Mark Hertsgaard | January 28, 2019 | The Nation

If you don’t know who Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is, you can think of her as an international climate-change counterpart to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like the rock-star congresswoman from New York, Thunberg is a charismatic young woman whose social-media savvy, moral clarity, and fearless speaking truth to power have inspired throngs of admirers to take to the streets for a better world and call out the politicians and CEOs who are standing in the way.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, is known for championing the #GreenNewDeal and schooling right-wing haters on Twitter. Thunberg, 16, is known for launching the #SchoolStrike4Climate movement—tens of thousands of high-school students worldwide are skipping school on Fridays until their governments treat the climate crisis as an emergency—and for torching billionaires and heads of state at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

Demolishing the convenient notion that we are all to blame for climate change, Thunberg told a Davos panel that included president Trump’s former chief economics adviser Gary Cohn, “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.” She paused before a final thrust of the knife: “I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”

Call them the Climate Kids. Like Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg themselves, the grassroots activist movements they have roused are comprised almost exclusively of teenagers and twenty-somethings. These are not your father’s environmentalists: supplicant, “realistic,” and accepting of failure. These young people are angry about the increasingly dire climate future awaiting them and clear-eyed about who’s to blame and how to fix it. And they seem to have the bad guys worried.

Continue reading at The Nation

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Below is a repost of my article posted at Re-ENERGIZE Buffalo (Dec.16, 2018) along with an UPDATE:

Young Activist Condemns World's Inaction on Climate Change at U.N. Summit

Greta Thunberg, a 15 year-old high school student from Sweden, realized at a young age the difference in what climate experts were saying needed to be done and the actions that were being taken in society.

She decided to take matters into her own hands.

With focus and poise beyond her years, Greta spoke truth to power in an audience of adults including U.N. officials and world government representatives at the recent Climate Summit (COP 24) in Poland. She cited inaction on climate change as a burden that adults are leaving on their children:

You say you love your children above all else, and yet you're stealing their future in front of their very eyes. Until you start focusing on what needs to be done, rather than its what is politically possible, there is no hope. 

Watch a short video of Greta's powerful and moving speech at the U.N. Climate Summit below:

On Hope: 
Elsewhere, in a TEDx Talk, Greta said, "Yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere."

School Strike for the Climate:
The U.N. Summit speech was not Greta’s first climate action. Earlier this year, Greta demanded that her government in Sweden undertake a radical response to climate change. She protested for more than a month in Stockholm, sitting on the steps of the parliament building, every day during school hours for three weeks. She has returned to school for four days a week; she now spends her Fridays on the steps of parliament.  Read more about Greta and what makes her special in The New Yorker


UPDATE: Greta was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Here is part of Greta's message to Davos before leaving by train from Stockholm to Switzerland:

“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 want to challenge those companies and those decision makers into real and bold climate action. To set their economic goals aside and to safeguard the future living conditions for humankind.”

Watch the video below and Listen to this articulate young human being:

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Greta's Speech at the World Economic Forum

Greta’s bottom line:
“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.”
Watch a short video of Greta’s speech and read the full text of her speech at The Guardian

School Strikes over Climate Change continue to Snowball:
Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss school children in the Davos ski resort on Friday — the final day of the World Economic Forum.  Read the report at Grist