[Namrata Iyer]: I think some of the biggest challenges my generation faces is convincing
the previous generations about why it's important to talk about what we believe in.
[Greta Thunberg]: We can't choose between us young people saying to adults you must
behave but we can't wait for us to become the ones in charge because we don't have time
for that.
[Timothée Chalamet]: Your youth does not have to work against you by way of experience,
your youth can be a virtue by way of what you ethically and earnestly expect of the
world.
[Billie Eilish]: People can be so selfish about the environment and their experience
versus the globe and literally our lifespan.
[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]: The America we grew up in is like nothing like the America
our parents or grandparents grew up in.
[Nyke Slawik]: When you have young people who are confronted with not having a future
at all of course this is going to radicalize a whole generation.
This is a question of survival basically.
[John Kerry]: I don't doubt that we will get to a net zero carbon economy.
Will we get there fast enough to heed the science and avoid the worst consequences?
That's the battle.
That's what we're trying to do with Glasgow.
[Thunberg]: What do we want?
[Audience]: Climate justice.
[Thunberg]: When do we want it?
[Audience]: Now.
[Thunberg]: What do we want?
[Audience]: Climate justice.
[Thunberg]: When do we want it?
[Audience]: Now.
[Thunberg]: Thank you.
[Justin Worland]: This generation has reframed the way we talk and think about climate to
make it an issue of intergenerational justice.
The question is will this anger turn into action?
Will leaders who have been listening actually take the message to heart and do something
about it?
[Kerry]: Our diplomacy is guided by what the scientists are telling us we must achieve.
Three years ago they had a report in 2018 the IPCC gave us 12 years within which to
make the critical decisions to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
[Hoesung Lee]: Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is not impossible but will require unprecedented
transitions in all aspects of society.
[Worland]: It was alarming in its the seriousness with which it portrayed the consequences of
climate change.
We're talking about hundreds of millions of people migrating.
We're talking about the possibility of countries disappearing in their entirety.
We're talking about a world that is totally transformed.
Already 85 percent of the world's population has been affected by human-caused climate
change.
[Jim Skea]: The message is over to governments at this stage.
We've told you what you—the scientific facts, the evidence, the costs.
It is up to the governments now to decide what to do with it.
[Ciara Nugent]: We've had loads and loads of reports about climate change over the last
couple of decades and the massive threat to our planet but despite all of the science
there are still people who are skeptical about how much of a big deal it really is.
And I think for those people it's much harder to dismiss young people, normal school kids
because they're part of their communities, they're part of their families often.
[Nyke Slawik]: What we need is politicians who implement the policies in their home countries
and that's—that's what has not been happening in the last years.
And so now young people are saying why go to school?
Why go to university?
Why start planning a family? Why buy a house when I don't even know that in 50 years time
or 70 years time I will still have a future, because right now that's at stake.
[Ocasio-Cortez]: If we do nothing this is what's going to happen: sea levels are going rise,
crops are going to die out, there will be mass starvation.
There's going to be all of these things that are going to happen and kids see that,
they internalize it.
[Charlotte Alter]: Researchers have found that young voters form their lifelong political
attitudes in response to the events of their early adulthood, mostly late teens into the
late 20s.
And for millennials and gen z that period of time has been defined by climate catastrophe.
[Christian Hidalgo]: I'm from Bakersfield, California, central valley.
Earlier today I've been getting snapchats from all of my friends talking about how orange
the sky is because of the wildfire surrounding us.
The closest wildfire is probably not even 60 miles away but we have horrible air quality
like we're—I'm in the middle of the valley and it just it really strongly affects us
and that's what—that's what's drawn me to climate activism.
[Isabella Guariniello]: This is my first strike ever.
I watched a bunch of like sad penguin videos on YouTube and I started to get really sad
when I learned about the effects of animals and like how much earth that we're actually
losing.
It's hard not to get discouraged when you're constantly learning about what people before
you did wrong.
[Sassy Fernandez]: Like I remember being in elementary school and watching Al Gore's documentary
about climate change and the effects that we could be seeing within the next 10, 15
years and so far he's been pretty right about everything that he said in his documentary.
I totally forgot what it was called but shout outs to my science teacher.
[Thunberg]: We are being betrayed by those in power and they are failing us but we will
not back down.
And if you feel threatened by that then I have some very bad news for you.
We will not be silenced because we are the change and change is coming whether you like
it or not.
We need to work together intergenerational of course that is the only way and we need
to—everyone needs to participate and help out in the way we can.
So I'm doing what I can.
I'm trying to use my voice to spread awareness and to—to put pressure on those in power.
[Alter]: When TIME put Greta on the cover in 2019 she had just gone from being a school
girl protesting alone outside of Swedish parliament to being the leader of a global climate movement.
That year her activism inspired four million people to join the global climate strike in
2019 which was at that point the largest climate movement in world history.
[Worland]: Across the world with very few exceptions there are examples of people who
have been inspired by her and have led—who've taken up the mantle the Fridays for Future
movement in countries across the world.
[Thunberg]: I'm not a leader or the face of the climate movement, I'm just one of many
faces.
[Vanessa Nakate]: There are far too little evidence of the 100 billion dollars per year
that was promised to help climate vulnerable countries to meet these challenges.
In fact, those funds were promised to arrive by 2020 and we are still waiting.
[Nugent]: Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, is one of many people who have been
working to remind us that climate action is going to be expensive and many countries who
are most vulnerable to climate change can't afford to pay for it alone.
[Nakate]: Historically Africa is responsible for only three percent of global emissions
and yet some Africans are already suffering some of the worst and brutal impacts of climate
change, so to me climate justice doesn't just have to be about reducing greenhouse gas emissions
it goes beyond the primary disasters that we see.
It is what happens in the aftermath of those disasters, what happens to families, what
happens to individuals, what happens to communities.
[Worland]: You think about the fact that the U.S. has emitted a quarter of emissions historically.
Africa has emitted three percent of emissions historically and the U.S. is able to isolate
itself, to pay for adaptation, to pay for the costs in a way that developing countries
in sub-saharan Africa and across the globe just can't.
And so climate change is a justice issue on many different levels.
[Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala]: We we have to bear in mind that whether you're rich or poor,
a rich country or poor country, there are some things you just cannot do on your own.
You can't deliver on this pandemic on your own, you cannot deliver on climate change
on your own.
[Nakate]: So what we really want is a future that is healthy, that is sustainable, that
is clean, that is livable and equitable for all of us.
[Nugent]: Some of the activists that I speak to are realizing they can't wait for the older
generation to take action so they're trying to get elected to governments themselves.
In Germany, the Green Party has really been in the ascendancy.
In September they've almost doubled their number of seats in parliament and one of the
118 lawmakers they now have is Nyke Slawik.
She's a 27 year old German politician who was elected in September to the Bundestag
and she has been involved in climate activism for almost 12 years and now she has political
power to make a difference.
[Slawik]: The time of just implementing small changes has passed and this is a reality we
as younger politicians are bringing with us to the parliament now but of course there's
lots of older colleagues who have not quite grasped this yet, and I think this is why
we might be more determined to not go for the small compromises, to be a bit more rebellious
about these things.
The last German government has decided to exit coal in 2038 which is still too late
way too late but now we even have the chance to accelerate energy transition from coal
to renewables way quicker and that's a major achievement of the youth climate movement.
[Alter]: In the United States young voters across the political spectrum understand that
climate change is a major issue that needs to be addressed, they just disagree on how
best to do it.
So even younger Republicans, Republicans under 40, they understand that climate change is
happening, they understand that something has to be done about it, they just don't agree
with their more progressive peers about the scale and scope of what that intervention
needs to be.
So this is a big shift from a couple generations ago when you had one side insisting that climate
change was a problem and the other side basically denying that it was happening at all.
[Worland]: When TIME spoke to Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, he spoke about how
the youth movement had made him want to do better.
When I talked to the U.N. Secretary General he talked about how he was trying to bring
youth into the climate discussion because it had enthused him and he thought it would
help change the conversation.
Talking to members of Congress about how inspirational Greta was really made clear to me that she
was changing the conversation.
[Nugent]: In my reporting activists are telling me that COP 26 is a crucial moment to find
out if politicians are really listening to them and really taking action or if they're
just saying they're listening and delaying action.
[Nakate]: Leaders keep praising young people for standing up and protesting but saving
the world needs action, it needs decisions from the leaders, decisions that prioritize
the lives of the people and the planet, and that is not something that we are doing.
The words of the leaders are not matching up with their actions.
[Thunberg]: Words.
Words that sound great but so far has led to no action.
Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.
Of course we need constructive dialogue but they've now had 30 years of blah blah blah
and where has that led us?
[Jane Goodall]: I'm about to leave the world and leave it behind me with all the mess whereas
young people have to grow up into it.
That's why they need every bit of help they can.
And if, you know, if they succumb to the doom and gloom ,which many have, then they lose
hope.
If you lose hope that's the end, because if you don't hope that there's a way out, if
you don't hope that your actions can make a difference then you sink into apathy and
do nothing.
So hope is absolutely crucial if we're to get through this.
[Singing]: We're going to strike because our waters are rising.
We're going to strike because our people are dying.
We're going to strike for life and everything we love.
We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us?
We're going to strike because our waters are rising.
We're going to strike because our people are dying.
We're going to strike for life and everything we love.
We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us?
Beautiful.