- My name is Greta Thunberg.
I am sixteen years old.
I come from Sweden,
and I want you to panic.
- [Narrator] Greta is a sixteen year old girl
who has inspired thousands, maybe even millions of people
to stand up for both themselves and the climate.
- [Narrator #2] She thought everything was going
in the wrong direction, and now she's become
a really big role model for a lot of people.
- My interest about the climate and the environment
began at, when I was maybe ten years old,
and my, my teacher's in school told me that
there's something called climate change and global warming
and it's caused by humans and our behavior,
and I thought that sounded very strange,
because if that was so, if there was something
that big that threatened our very existence,
then that would be our first priority.
We wouldn't be talking about anything else.
But it wasn't our first priority.
- We live in a strange world
where the united science tells us
we are about eleven years away from setting off
an irreversible chain reaction way beyond human control
that will probably be the end of our civilization
as we know it.
We live in a strange world
where children must sacrifice their education
in order to protest against the destruction of their future,
where the people who have contributed the least
to this crisis are the ones who are going
to be affected the most,
where politicians say it's too expensive to save the world
while spending trillions of euros subsidizing fossil fuels.
We live in a strange world
where no one dares to look beyond our current
political systems, even though it's clear
that the answers we seek will be not found
within the politics of today.
Our civilization is so fragile,
it is almost like a castle built in the sand.
The facade is so beautiful, but the foundations
are far from solid.
We have been cutting so many corners.
Yesterday the world watched with despair
an enormous sorrow how the Notre Dame burned in Paris.
Some buildings are more than just buildings.
But the Notre Dame will be rebuilt.
I hope that its foundations are strong.
I hope that our foundations are even stronger,
but I fear they are not.
For way too long, the politicians
and the people in power have gotten away
with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis,
but we will make sure that they will not
get away with it any longer.
We will continue to school strike until they do something.
(crowd cheers)
Now we are striking because we have done our homework
and they have not.
(crowd cheers)
We must change almost everything in our current societies.
The bigger your carbon footprint is,
the bigger your moral duty.
The bigger your platform,
the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people
to give them hope.
But I don't want your hope.
I don't want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,
and then I want you to act.
I want you to act as if you were in a crisis.
I want you to act as if the house was on fire,
because it is.
Many people say that Sweden is just a small country
and it doesn't matter what we do.
But I've learned that you are never too small
to make a difference.
And if a few children can get headlines all over the world,
just by not going to school,
then imagine what we could all do together
if we really wanted to.
(foreboding music)