From Lone Climate Protester to A Worldwide Movement: Greta Thunberg

On Dec. 11, 2019 TIME magazine named Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old Swedish climate activist, its Person of the Year.  A little more than one year ago (i.e. at age 15) she felt sufficiently worried

Source: https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/

about the effects that climate change was wreaking that she felt she needed to take action.  She began once-weekly stints of abandoning her school and sitting, alone, in front of the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm with a sign reading “Student Climate Strike”.

After a few weeks others, especially youth, took up her cause and the numbers grew to the tens, and soon became an international movement.  By December 2018 she had gained sufficient renown to address the 24^th annual United Nations climate conference in Katowice, Poland.  (The 21^st conference is the one that produced the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015).  This writer transcribed passages from her address, shown in this graphic and below:

Screenshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg; Image by Henry E. Auer

“You [adults] are not mature enough to tell it like it is.  Even that burden you leave to us children ….In 2078 I will celebrate my 75^th birthday.  [Maybe my children] will ask me about you.  Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act….We  cannot solve the crisis without treating it as a crisis….We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time.”

Since then, Ms. Thunberg has galvanized an entirely new climate movement, comprised largely of youth.  The power of her message led to worldwide climate demonstrations on Sept. 20, 2019, and to speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23.  Most recently, after sailing to and from the U. S. without fossil fuels, on a boat equipped with solar panels, she spoke at the 25^th U.N. climate conference in Madrid, Spain on Dec. 11, 2019 (her speech beginning at about 16:00 min. at the linked video).  This was only moments before TIME announced honoring her as Person of the Year.  Here are excerpts from her speech, transcribed and edited by this writer.

“…For about a year, I have been talking about our rapidly declining carbon budget….  But …this is still being ignored….[T]he SR 1.5 IPCC Report [Special 1.5°C Report, from the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] that came out last year [says] if we are to …[limit] the temperature rise [since the industrial revolution began] to below 1.5°C we had, on Jan. 1, 2018, 420 gigatonnes [gT, billions of metric tons] of CO₂ left [to emit into the atmosphere]….  And of course that number is much lower today [2 years later] as we emit about 42 gT every year….[T]hat remaining budget will be gone within about 8 years…

“…[T]hese figures…do not say anything about the aspect of equity, which is absolutely essential to make the Paris Agreement work…[applause].  That means that richer countries need to…get down to…zero emissions much faster, then help poorer countries do the same, so that [they] can raise their living standards….

“How do you react to these numbers without feeling…some…panic?  How do you respond to the fact that nothing is being done about this without feeling anger? And …without sounding alarmist?....

“Recently [some] countries pledged to reduce … emissions … by so and so many percent by this or that date….This may sound impressive …, but… this is not leadership…this is misleading….These pledges don’t include the immediate yearly reduction rates needed…to stay within the remaining tiny [carbon] budget…

“Finding holistic solutions is what [this 25^th meeting] should be all about.  But instead, it [becomes] an opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and raise their emissions [applause]….

“This has to stop.  What we need is real drastic emission cuts….[They have] to stop….We need to keep the carbon in the ground….[T]he changes required are nowhere in sight.  The politics needed do not exist today….[T]he real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening, when in fact almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR [applause]….

“[T]here is hope….It does not come from the government or corporations.  It comes from the people….People are ready for change….Every great change …come[s] from the people.”

Greta Thunberg has mobilized youth (and adults) because her generation, born in the years just following the dawn of the new millennium, is the first destined to experience the full brunt of the climate crisis foreseen in climate models that typically extend from the present to the end of this century. Their lifetimes will extend throughout most or all of this span.  These reports include the IPCC Special Report-Global Warming of 1.5 ºC   referred to by Ms. Thunberg, and the U. S. Fourth National Climate Assessment, among many others.

Climate harms are already fully apparent throughout the world on almost a daily basis in news reports in the last few years.  These include unprecedented heat and drought, resulting shrinkage and loss of water resources, extensive and terrifying wildfires in both virgin woodlands and inhabited regions, extreme precipitation leading to freshwater flooding, agricultural lands removed from routine production due to excessive flooding, progressive sea level rise, and extreme tropical storms that are larger and longer-lasting than in the past, and extreme shoreline storm surges.  Unchecked warming of the earth’s atmosphere is modeled to make these harms and damages even more severe than currently experienced.  These predicted harms constitute a true climate crisis. 

These are the reasons we must heed our youth activists; our actions can help achieve the climate mitigation steps needed for their lifetime wellbeing.  The IPCC Special Report-Global Warming of 1.5 ºC makes clear that drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emission rates must be fully under way by about 2030 and those rates reduced to near zero by about 2040.  As Ms. Thunberg signals, the Special Report specifies that our remaining carbon budget is rapidly dwindling.

 © 2019 Henry Auer