Let's learn Biology and Geology in English!: May 2019

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from from Sweden and
I want you to panic.
I want you to act as if your house was on fire.
I have said those words before
And a lot of people has explained why that is a bad idea.
A great number of politicians have told me that panic never leads to anything good.
And I agree.
To panic unless you have to is a terrible idea.
But when your house is on fire and you want to keep your house from burning to the
ground, then that does require some level of panic.
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 and enormous sorrow how the Notre Dame
burnt in Paris.
Some buildings are much more than just buildings.
But the Notre Dame will be rebuilt.
I hope that it’s foundations are strong.
I hope that our foundations are even stronger.
But I fear that they are not.
Around the year 2030. 10 years 259 days and 10 hours way from now. We will be in a
position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will
most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.
That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of
society have taken place. Including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.
And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet
been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear our atmosphere of
astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.
Furthermore do these calculations not include unforeseen tipping points and feed back
loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic
permafrost.
Nor do they include already locked in warming hidden by air pollution. Nor the aspect of
equity - or climate justice - clearly stated throughout the Paris Agreement, which is
absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.
We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that
these ”points of no return” may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for
sure.
We can however be certain that they will occur approximately in these time frames.
Because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.
These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the
IPCC. Nearly every major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports
the work and findings of the IPCC.We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and the extinction rate is up to ten
thousand times faster than what is considered normal, with up to 200 species becoming
extinct every single day.
Erosion of fertile topsoil, deforestation of our great forests, toxic air pollution, loss of
insects and wildlife, the acidification of our oceans - these are all disastrous trends being
accelerated by a way of life that we, here in our financially-fortunate part of the world, see
as our right to simply carry on.
But hardly anyone knows about these catastrophes - or understand how they are just the
first few symptoms of climate- and ecological breakdown.
Because how could they? They have not been told. Or more importantly: they have not
been told by the right people - and in the right way.
Our house is falling apart.
And our leaders need to start acting accordingly.
Because at the moment they are not.
If our house was falling apart our leaders wouldn’t go on like you do today.
You would change almost every part of your behavior. As you do in an emergency.
If our house was falling apart you wouldn’t fly around the world in business class chatting
about how the market will solve everything with clever small solutions to specific isolated
problems.
You wouldn’t talk about buying and building your way out of a crisis that has been created
by buying and building things.
If our house was falling apart you wouldn’t hold 3 emergency Brexit summits and no
emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and eco systems.
You wouldn’t be arguing about phasing out coal in 15 or 11 years.
If our house was falling apart you wouldn’t be celebrating that one single nation like Ireland
may soon divest from fossil fuels.
You wouldn’t celebrate that Norway has decided to stop drilling for oil outside the scenic
resort of Lofoten Island, but will continue to drill everywhere else for decades.
It’s 30 years too late for that kind of celebrations
If our house was falling apart the media wouldn’t be writing about anything else. The
ongoing climate- and ecological crises would make up all the headlines.
If our house was falling apart you wouldn’t say that you have the situation under control
and place the future living conditions for all living species in the hands of inventions that
are yet to be invented.
And you would not spend all your time as politicians arguing over taxes or Brexit.
If the walls of our house truly came tumbling down, surely you would set your differences
aside and start cooperating.
Well, our house is falling apart.
And we are rapidly running out of time.And, yet basically nothing is happening.
Everyone and everything has to change so why waste precious time arguing about what
and who needs to change first?
Everyone and everything has to change. But the bigger your platform the bigger your
responsibility.
The bigger your carbon footprint the bigger your moral duty.
When I tell politicians to act now the most common answer is that they can’t do anything
drastic, because that would be too unpopular among voters.
And they are right of course. Since most people are not even aware of why those changes
are required. That is why I keep telling you to unite behind the science - make the best
available science the heart of politics and democracy.
The EU elections are coming up soon. And many of us who will be affected the most by
this crisis, people like me, are not allowed to vote. Nor are we in a position to shape the
decisions of business, politics, engineering, media, education or science. Because the
time it takes for us to educate ourselves to do that simply does no longer exists.
And that is why millions of children are taking it to the streets, school striking for the
climate to create attention for the climate crisis.
You need to listen to us - we who cannot vote. You need to vote for us, for your children
and grandchildren.
What we are doing now can soon no longer be undone.
In this election you vote for the future living conditions of human kind.
And though the politics needed do not exist today, some alternatives are certainly less
worse than others. And I have read in newspapers that some parties do not even want me
standing here today because they so desperate do not to talk about climate breakdown.
Our house is falling part.
The future - as well as all that we have achieved in the past - is literally in your hands now.
But it is not too late to act.
It will take a far-reaching vision. It will take courage. It will take a fierce determination to act
now to lay the foundations when we may not know all of the details about how to shape
the ceiling. In other words, it will take ‘cathedral thinking’.
I ask you to please wake up and make the required changes possible.
To do your best is no longer good enough. We must all do the seemingly impossible.
And it’s okay if you refuse to listen to me. I am after all just a 16 year-old schoolgirl from
from Sweden.
But you can not ignore the scientists. Or the science. Or the millions of schoolchildren
school striking for the right to a future.
16/4/2019
Speaking notes for a speech held in the European Parliament in Strasbourg at an
extraordinary meeting of the Environment Committee, open to all members.