Greta Thunberg's speech to world leaders at the U.N. Climate Session
"My message is that we'll be watching you.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.
"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.
"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.
"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
"My message is that we'll be watching you.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.
"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.
"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.
"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
Emma González , speech on Feb 17, 2018, 3 days after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v Des Moines, we are going to change the law. And it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the students now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.
If President Trump wants to tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.
It doesn’t matter because I already know: $30m. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the first one and a half months of 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800 each. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.
To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you. The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and call BS. Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are is self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS.
Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.
We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v Des Moines, we are going to change the law. And it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the students now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.
If President Trump wants to tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.
It doesn’t matter because I already know: $30m. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the first one and a half months of 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800 each. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.
To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you. The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and call BS. Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are is self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS.
Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.
Shiden Tekle, racial justice activist
I’ve been racially abused since about 12, but it was never seen as an important thing to tackle. At secondary school, white children called me disgusting things, but teachers would turn a blind eye. And not just to racism, but sexism, homophobia, transphobia. There’s also internal racism in the Eritrean community. My dad is called names because he has darker skin. It all comes from preconceived ideas that black is less, or the darker you are the lower you are in terms of income, society and politics.
Because these problems weren’t taken seriously, I normalized them. But when I moved to a sixth form where the majority of students are black girls, I was surrounded by political and social consciousness. The more educated I got, the angrier I became. Last summer, I joined an organization called the Advocacy Academy and, with a small group of people my age, we launched a campaign challenging the image and under-representation of black people in the media. We recreated iconic posters, such as Doctor Who, Titanic and Harry Potter, and made all the characters black. The campaign is rooted in personal experiences and I’ve gone from talking about things with my friends in the lunch hall to speaking about them nationally.
The Academy has revolutionized the way I think. Back in the day I definitely upheld toxic masculine identities. I’d tell myself that I didn’t cry. Challenging gender norms wasn’t of interest to me because I wanted to fit in with my friends. But I’ve learned to let go of my ego and be vulnerable so I can say what’s on my mind. It’s allowed me to take all the cold anger I have built up over years and turn it into something good. I’ve learned to become an ally to many other issues that don’t affect me directly.
After university, I don’t just want to get a really good job, buy a big house and forget about my community. I want to change something and challenge the status quo.
I’ve been racially abused since about 12, but it was never seen as an important thing to tackle. At secondary school, white children called me disgusting things, but teachers would turn a blind eye. And not just to racism, but sexism, homophobia, transphobia. There’s also internal racism in the Eritrean community. My dad is called names because he has darker skin. It all comes from preconceived ideas that black is less, or the darker you are the lower you are in terms of income, society and politics.
Because these problems weren’t taken seriously, I normalized them. But when I moved to a sixth form where the majority of students are black girls, I was surrounded by political and social consciousness. The more educated I got, the angrier I became. Last summer, I joined an organization called the Advocacy Academy and, with a small group of people my age, we launched a campaign challenging the image and under-representation of black people in the media. We recreated iconic posters, such as Doctor Who, Titanic and Harry Potter, and made all the characters black. The campaign is rooted in personal experiences and I’ve gone from talking about things with my friends in the lunch hall to speaking about them nationally.
The Academy has revolutionized the way I think. Back in the day I definitely upheld toxic masculine identities. I’d tell myself that I didn’t cry. Challenging gender norms wasn’t of interest to me because I wanted to fit in with my friends. But I’ve learned to let go of my ego and be vulnerable so I can say what’s on my mind. It’s allowed me to take all the cold anger I have built up over years and turn it into something good. I’ve learned to become an ally to many other issues that don’t affect me directly.
After university, I don’t just want to get a really good job, buy a big house and forget about my community. I want to change something and challenge the status quo.
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Climate change activist
If someone tells me I should be in school right now, I know that they don’t see the bigger picture. Earth’s ability to support human life is falling apart and if things don’t change in the next five to 10 years, nothing’s going to matter.
I’ll finish high school, but right now this is the most important thing I can do with my time. Myself and 20 other kids are currently suing the Trump administration for violating our constitutional rights for failure to act on climate change. We originally launched it against the Obama administration a few years ago. The US government has known the fossil fuel industry is having a negative impact on our climate, yet they have been offering them subsidies and opening up land to exploration. We have just heard that we are going to trial in October.
I’m also involved in law actions and civil disobedience to stop fracking around my hometown of Boulder. In 2012, my friends and I successfully helped push for a five-year ban.
From a young age, I was aware of my part in protecting our planet. I was three or four the first time I went on a protest, and six when I started speaking at them. I was born in Colorado and have spent a lot of time in Mexico. My entire childhood was travelling, hanging out in nature and learning about my family’s indigenous heritage. My dad taught me that we have a responsibility to protect the Earth the way that our ancestors did.
I’ve spoken at the UN about my work. I was surprised how disrespectful, disconnected and sterile it was. The delegates were on their phones, not listening. They perked up when they heard I was just 15 years old. The power of me speaking wasn’t for them but for the millions of people my speech has since reached online.
The world is seeing how powerful young people are and how things are going to change. Adults on CNN and in the United States specifically, they can argue and cover gossip about Trump and his hair and porn stars. But young people are mobilising on the streets.
There’s so much power in what’s happening within our generation. We don’t have the respect we deserve, but I think it’s coming.
If someone tells me I should be in school right now, I know that they don’t see the bigger picture. Earth’s ability to support human life is falling apart and if things don’t change in the next five to 10 years, nothing’s going to matter.
I’ll finish high school, but right now this is the most important thing I can do with my time. Myself and 20 other kids are currently suing the Trump administration for violating our constitutional rights for failure to act on climate change. We originally launched it against the Obama administration a few years ago. The US government has known the fossil fuel industry is having a negative impact on our climate, yet they have been offering them subsidies and opening up land to exploration. We have just heard that we are going to trial in October.
I’m also involved in law actions and civil disobedience to stop fracking around my hometown of Boulder. In 2012, my friends and I successfully helped push for a five-year ban.
From a young age, I was aware of my part in protecting our planet. I was three or four the first time I went on a protest, and six when I started speaking at them. I was born in Colorado and have spent a lot of time in Mexico. My entire childhood was travelling, hanging out in nature and learning about my family’s indigenous heritage. My dad taught me that we have a responsibility to protect the Earth the way that our ancestors did.
I’ve spoken at the UN about my work. I was surprised how disrespectful, disconnected and sterile it was. The delegates were on their phones, not listening. They perked up when they heard I was just 15 years old. The power of me speaking wasn’t for them but for the millions of people my speech has since reached online.
The world is seeing how powerful young people are and how things are going to change. Adults on CNN and in the United States specifically, they can argue and cover gossip about Trump and his hair and porn stars. But young people are mobilising on the streets.
There’s so much power in what’s happening within our generation. We don’t have the respect we deserve, but I think it’s coming.