Transcriber: Anna Sobota Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Less rain, warmer seawater,
longer summers, shorter winters ...
Nothing wrong with global warming, right?
Sounds like a problem solved to me.
And aren’t we all complaining about Dutch weather all the time anyways?
That’s what I thought when I heard about climate change for the first time.
I was seven years old, and I had no idea what it really was about.
In the years that followed, I learned a bit more about climate change:
Animals would go extinct; there would be no North Pole.
Also, polar bears would die, which were one of my favorite animals back then.
There would be no snow in winter and no ice skating.
Those were the thoughts I had as, I think, a 10 year old girl,
but to be honest,
I didn’t think about it much.
I wasn’t worried because it would be in the future,
and when you are young,
the only thing you worry about is today, or maybe things like candy.
Just maybe.
But when I grew up, I began to look further, further in the futures.
I learned other consequences of climate change, like unlivable places on Earth.
About two billion people are living right now,
at this very moment,
in a place on Earth that will be unlivable in 30 years
if we don’t act now.
When I heard about all the problems climate change causes and will cost,
I just could not sit still anymore.
Why? you may ask.
Well, I've always been interested in the world around me.
Somehow, I want to know every moment of every day
what is going on in this world.
Right now, the biggest thing going on in this world is climate change.
In my opinion, it’s even worse than never eating chocolate anymore,
and well, then you know it’s bad.
I love reading in newspapers
and know about everything that is going on,
but it’s rather depressive.
In my opinion, the way we live now kills our planet,
but we keep on going and going and going.
The leaders of our countries,
they say that they’ll solve it, but still they seem to sit still.
When I make a promise, I stick to that.
I do what I say.
When me and my friends agree on working on a school assignment,
we simply do it.
World leaders seem to be a big exception to this rule.
To me, this feels like denying a big problem,
while there are things we can do to actually solve this problem.
At least, that’s what I thought.
I am here not because I quit school and protest for the climate.
No.
I am here because I wrote a letter to the prime minister of my country.
I am here because I worry about the climate and future of my generation.
We don’t have the power to change our future now.
I cannot vote.
I can go to climate strikes,
but this next day, it’s back to business, and our cry for help is ignored.
Then, what can I do?
I thought that maybe if I wrote a letter, I could do something.
Because of this, I was invited to talk with the prime minister himself.
Yeah, that’s kind of cool, and actually, Rutte was also kind of cool.
I was well-prepared with critical questions to make a good impression.
Rutte was very kind and listened to me and my worries,
but then, he came with really long answers
that weren’t even answers to the questions I had.
That’s politics, of course,
and I knew something like this would happen,
and I knew that I probably couldn’t change the world with one talk.
I think world leaders always choose economics before climate, always,
and that’s what is what I discovered as well when I talked with Rutte.
He said that the things we or, let me say, they are doing right now
are everything they can do because otherwise people would lose their jobs.
When he said this, I just could not believe my ears.
To my opinion,
if we right now spend a lot of money
to prevent all the bad things climate change will cause from happening,
we don´t even have to spend money later to heal our dikes,
to save people who live in unlivable places,
or to take care of field crops.
That's economics as well, right?
The minute I stepped out of the Binnenhof,
the place where I had the talk with Rutte,
I knew the whole world was probably still the same.
Of course, I can’t change the world with one talk,
but I did feel useless.
All these opportunities
to talk even to several television programs I attended to.
Would it really change their whole perspective?
I don’t think so, unfortunately.
It’s not easy to break human habits we have been following our entire lives.
To save the climate,
we should think about the climate the way we think about money,
the way our leaders think about money.
When you see a cute t-shirt, but the price is sky-high,
you probably won’t buy it, right?
That’s logic.
When you want to spend a holiday in, let’s say America,
you want to go by plane,
we should rethink the decision as well.
We should think, maybe we could spend the holiday in Italy as well.
Italy is very beautiful, and then, we could go by train or by car.
Like our wallets can get empty,
the planet can get totally exhausted as well.
Other people are deciding my future.
People who won’t even be there when my future is present reality.
It doesn’t matter if you hear it from a 15-year-old girl
or someone triple my age.
I'm just a messenger.
Don’t be so dramatic.
Well, I don’t like drama either.
I just like facts, reactivity.
The fact is that I feel powerless over my own future.
The thing is, I want to look back at this time when I’m 60 years old,
me thinking, “Damn it, I really hoped it would have worked.”
No.
I want to be able to look back and think, then, “We made it.”
And it’s possible.
A few months ago, there was a YouTuber that planted 20 million trees.
I know someone who collects plastic caps in order to make a skateboard out of it.
These people, they did walk their talk.
They show all of us that you can do something creative
and help the climate with it.
They make our world a little better.
I want people to stop making excuses and just listen to the scientists.
They’ve been telling us the consequences for years, but what did we really do?
World leaders, big companies,
what they all have in common is that they are rich,
powerful and probably have a big CO2 footprint.
Everyone knows these leaders, knows the big companies.
They need to be the ones that need to take the lead.
They need to be sustainable.
They need to be the ones that are telling us that it’s possible,
that we can save the world.
It’s not about me
or about Greta Thunberg
or about David Attenborough.
I don’t need you to remember me or my age.
I just need you to act.