greta thunberg and the school strike for the climate

CLIMATE ACTIVIST GRETA THUNBERG recently joined Naomi Klein for a conversation on the climate emergency. Klein is a well-published author, senior correspondent at The Intercept, and the inaugural Gloria Steinem endowed chair of media, culture, and feminist studies at Rutgers University. Thunberg hasn’t graduated from high school yet she is credited with raising global awareness of the risks posed by global warming and climate change and politicians to task for their lack of action on the climate crisis.

Thunberg is a child of the 21st century, a Swedish teenager who was born in January 2003. In August 2018, she took time off from her classes to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament. There she carried a sign that read “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“School strike for the climate”)

Together they organized a school climate strike movement, under the name Fridays for Future. The FFF is now an international movement of school students who take time off from classes to participate in demonstrations demanding action to prevent further global warming and climate change.

After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were at least two coordinated multi-city protests involving over one million pupils each.

The May 27. 2019, issue of Time magazine featured “Next Generation Leaders: The Teenager on Strike for the Planet.” It addressed Greta Thunberg, who also posed for the cover photo in an emerald green gown set off by deep blue sneakers.

The Thunberg Effect

Thunberg is known for her blunt, matter-of-fact speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she urges immediate action to address what she describes as the climate crisis.

In May 2019, Thunberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine, which named her a next-generation leader and noted that many see her as a role model Thunberg and the school strike movement were also featured in the documentary Make the World Greta Again. Some media have described her impact on the world stage as the ‘Greta Thunberg effect.’ ” (Wikipedia)

Cartoon by Pat Bagley for The The Salt Lake Tribune (September 20, 2019). Unfortunately, this is not how it works: These people consider science to be a variation on voodoo placed here by Satan to tempt them away from righteousness.

I want you to panic

The conversation with Klein can be found on The Intercept as “If We Can Save the Banks, Then We Can Save the World.” The focus of the piece is a nine-minute video conversation between Thunberg and Klein but includes text by Klein:

“Greta Thunberg is one of the great truth-tellers of this or any time. Let me refresh your memories about some of her most iconic lines. To the U.N. climate negotiators in Poland last December, she said: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.”

To the British MPs who asked her to speak, she asked, “Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”

To the rich and mighty at Davos who praised her for giving them hope, she replied:

“I don’t want your hope.

I want you to panic.

I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.

I want you to act.

I want you to act as you would in a crisis.

I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

She also told them that not everyone is to blame for the climate crisis. No, she looked them in the eye and said that they were to blame. And we will always love her for that.”

To read the complete article, click HERE.

FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of the page is 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. She is already a formidable opponent to people several generations older than her and should be a force tom reckon with for years to come. Hopefully, she will take some classes in debating in school to hone her skills.