The New Face of Climate Change Activism

Greta Thunberg has made strides in climate change activism and has become an inspiration for youth across the world.

Greta Thunberg, a sixteen year old from Stockholm, Sweden has started a movement. In August of 2018, Greta decided to skip school, but instead of relaxing on her day off, she stood outside of Parliament with a hand painted sign that read “school strike for the climate.”

Greta’s fire for climate change has ignited the same passion in youth across the world. Greta’s strike has now grown into a movement named “Friday’s for Future.” Through this organization she encourages students to strike at their nearest town hall on Fridays. Their website, fridaysforfuture.org, emphasizes that students should “only strike in a way that [they] feel safe with” and that all strikes are to be “peaceful and quiet” because student safety is one of their top priorities.

Although the strike participants are students, Greta wished that the focus was on the climate, rather than the age of the activists. In an article by The New Scientist, Thunberg said that, “They talk about our age, our looks and so on. [but] The emissions are still rising and that is all that matters. Nothing has happened, that is crucial to remember.”

It is apparent here that she is not striking for the fame, but for the improvement of the environment. On the “Fridays For Future” website, it states that although children are required to go to school, the point of going is becoming “pointless.” The site also raises the questions “why study for a future, which may not be there" and “why spend a lot of effort to become educated, when our governments are not listening to the educated?” Both of these statements made by Fridays for Future capture the frustrations held by climate change activists worldwide.

Greta believes that it is and has been time for adults to switch their focus from “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” to the facts that scientists have been continuously presenting for the past “30 years.” Greta hopes that the claims that politicians and businessmen “hear us [the cries for action on climate change] and understand the situation” are false, because the “politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight” and if they truly understood the situation and failed to act than they “would be evil,” and that's something she refuses to believe.