The voice of Greta Thunberg – The Climate Activist

Youth, Consciousness, Awareness, Commitment, Courage, Determination. These are less or more things to change the world. Or, at last, to try to and possessing some more chances to succeed. 

Well, Greta Thunberg has them all. The Swedish 16-years-old has been under the global flashlights for months. Not for news or trifles, which might be the only way to make people speak about you at this age, according to some adults. 

No, she is doing exactly what many grown-ups in power have declined to do for years, she’s making them facing the broken truth. “Our planet is in danger. Our future is at stake”. And who keeps “crying conspiracy theory” about the climate change said by Thunberg has never been that ridiculous.

Here, in a few lines, is Greta’s activity or better activism and what her acts and words are triggering from a side to the other of the globe.

The voice of who wants to get back the future:

In May 2018, a Swedish newspaper launches a contest. It’s won by a teenager with an article on the environment, that is written. An activist reads it, gets impressed by it and invites every student to strike some days later. 

Only the girl of the article is in, and she goes to the sit-in by the Swedish Parliament palace with a poster: “strike from school for the climate”. She keeps performing it for days, weeks until she resolves to limit the strike only to Fridays, to not miss each day of school. Although, as she says, what’s the purpose of going to school to learn something to implement in the future we might not have? That teenager is Greta Thunberg. 

Maybe she didn’t know back to those May days that she was powering a strong and unstoppable machine. Her parents, Svante Thunberg and Malena Ernman, an actor and opera singer, are simply an ordinary pair of parent-managers who want to preserve the planet. Query their goals and risk being involved in “climate denial”, or of threatening a vulnerable child with Asperger’s syndrome.

Greta has Asperger’s syndrome, an ailment in which those affected have struggles in social interaction. But the disability is really a plus point according to her. Greta’s words: “This helps me see things more clearly. I think a lot, especially if anything is bothering me, or if I am scared of anything.”

Being a climate change nerd, she read broadly on the subject and when she got to know about the catastrophic consequence of global warming, she was stunned. Then the 11-year-old Greta went into a depression and lost 10 kg in just two months. 

First, she’s convinced her parents about the importance of dealing with this issue seriously. Then, she’s started making the international press listen.

Today she speaks to hundreds of thousands of teenagers who do not leave her alone anymore in that Friday’s strike. Certainly, the 15th March 2019 there was the first global strike for the climate, supported by the movement born with Greta’s activity: Fridays For Future. 1.6 millions of people went down in the streets all over the world to protest and 370 thousands of these were Italians (highest share of participants among EU countries).

The well-known 2 C° the scientist have been talking about for years has become such an indispensable objective to have been lowered to 1,5 C°. What do they stand for? The global warming threshold to not exceed if we want to avoid floods and various environmental disasters. 

With consequent chains of catastrophes for each economy in the world. The planet’s temperature has increased by a degree in the last century, but the prediction is that the remaining half degree will be reached between 2030 and 2040.

What is Greta’s plans in her school holidays?

Greta has chosen to take a vacation from school, to travel the world (not by plane, it pollutes) and talk to as many people as she can, mainly global leaders. She wants to keep challenging them to act concretely before it is too late. Hopefully, they’ll listen.

Greta’s words are often harsh, someone even thinks they’re not hers. But it is enough to hear her talking in front of a crowd to feel how much that “hardness” is true and sincere because it is no more the time to use mince words. 

It makes one smile to think that a teenager of 16 is the one who has to take the lead on a matter that’s been out of control for years. But it also makes one angry, because it shows as many countries across the world are under the responsibility of someone who has not a crystal-clear view of priorities. And the future of the Earth, the only one we have, certainly is the priority.

Cut to March 15, 2019, when thousands of school students from over 1600 cities across 105 countries were sparked by the 16-year-old to take part in an alike protest demanding urgent action over climate change. Greta has now been called for the Nobel Peace Prize for launching this mass movement.

India is a growing country. Who best to take charge of its future than the youth themselves? Greta is simply an ordinary 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl whose burning visions have convinced the parliaments of Britain and Ireland to declare a “climate emergency”. India needs hundreds of Gretas. After all, climate change, as Thunberg says emphatically, is an “existential crisis”.

Image Courtesy: Youtube, forourgrandchildren.ca, business insider, archive.4plebs.org