“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

“How dare you?” thundered a 16 year-old Greta Thunberg at the UN Climate Action Summit. The world was watching and listening, and it was shamed.

 

Greta Thunberg is an ordinary citizen of the world. A few years ago she learned about the growing climate change crisis in school and decided to do something about it. She was 15 when she started by protesting in front of the Swedish parliament. Her parents didn’t approve but they saw how much it mattered to her, and once they saw all the research that their daughter had collected, they came around.

Today Greta is 16 and she is leading a revolution.

Kids Lead The Way

Greta Thunberg is inspiring climate strikes around the world and millions of people are organizing or attending #FridaysforFuture to raise awareness. Most of the people attending? They are kids themselves. Kids who should be in school, preparing for a life that is yet to begin. Kids who should be hanging out with friends, playing outside, doing their homework and making poor choices behind the school building.

That’s not what these kids are doing though. Instead, they are stepping up and fighting for a better world because the adults – all of us – have been too lazy. We need urgent action from the adults to combat climate change.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. Ashamed that our actions and our inactions have brought the world to the brink of awful, irreversible change. Our need for convenience and efficiency has reduced food to a commodity. And it’s affecting the planet.

Our disregard for our collective resources and the natural world means young children are spending their days fighting for a world that may already be ruined before they have a chance to experience the wonder of it.

Climate change is here. Scientists have validated it a number of times, in multiple reports. The planet is transforming before our very eyes. We can’t afford to weigh the pros and cons anymore. We need action and it needs to come from the adults.

It is not our children’s job to clean up the mess we made.

Impacting Climate Change Action 

• Educate yourself on how climate change will affect your life. Learn about food waste, plastic pollution and the UN special report on global warming in the resources on this website.
• Find out what your government is doing to preserve long-term prosperity and public health.
• Engage your community and your leaders to implement a plan to accommodate for far-reaching climate change.
• Advocate for our children’s future.

Our collective future depends on it.