(She is just a teenager but she is a force to be reckoned with. She is Greta Thunberg and she is a girl with a mission to get justice for the climate. If you are someone who wants to do their bit for Earth and its climate, you must have heard about Greta Thunberg, who at her young age has mobilized almost seven million children across the globe to fight with her and fight like her.
A few facts about Greta Thunberg that speak about her tenacious zeal to work for this cause include her starting this campaign at the age of fifteen. When Greta learned about the climatic changes happening she was shocked but what shocked her even more, was the indifferent attitude of the adult population towards it. She stopped eating, sleeping, even speaking for months on end. Such was the effect on her young mind that she was motivated to work towards this cause. She decided that she would never fly, eat meat or shop for unnecessary things. On August 20th, 2018 she sat down in front of the parliament of Sweden, holding a home-made banner that read: skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate). She sat outside the parliament every day for three weeks and that was just the beginning.
One of Greta Thunberg’s quotes on Twitter that said, “We children usually don’t do as you tell us to do, we do as you do. And if you adults don’t care about my future, neither do I. I will school strike for the climate until election day.” sparked a fire that spread to other Swedish cities, Europe and eventually to other continents as well. Greta Thunberg’s speech inspired not just children but adults across all the continents.
In August 2019, when Greta had to attend important climate conferences in the US, she showed the world that she meant every word of what formed the essence of a Greta Thunberg climate change speech. She did not board an airplane for her travel to the United States. Instead, she sailed for 14 days, ate freeze-dried food, did not shower and used a bucket as her makeshift toilet!
If you have heard the Greta Thunberg TED talk from December 2018, what will linger in your mind are her words when she says, ‘it’s time to panic: we're running out of time to save our planet.’
At the age of 17, Greta seeks to inspire the world to work towards saving the climate. She attended the United Nations COP24 in Katowice, Poland, in 2018 and her plenary speech at the event went viral. Millions of people heard Greta Thunberg's full speech which she delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2019. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and named one of the world's 100 most influential people by TIME magazine.
All this young activist wants is that people in power consider the well-being of humanity and the planet before their economic interest and she hopes her young brigade will achieve this goal soon. One of Greta Thunberg's meme on the web sums up what her work is all about. It says ‘Save the Planet. Or you’ll Re-Greta it’.Published by: Vibhuti Vazirani/ 2020-01-20