On May 1, 2019 England declared a "Climate Emergency". It was the first country to do so. The threat that hangs over life on our planet and the pressure of environmental groups made me take this difficult step. With the Climatic Emergency Great Britain put name and surname to gravity. The purpose of this review is to publicize the chain of scientific discoveries, protocols, agreements and alerts on the Earth's climate system, carried out at different times, most of which were not taken into account in time or were not fulfilled. All these errors and omissions led to the Climate Emergency, a late statement, but still useful, because it has lifted people who until now remained on the sidelines of the problem,as evidenced by the massive demonstrations of young people and adolescents around the world, ready to fight for their future.
1750. The Industrial Revolution, started in England, has been taken as a starting point or benchmark for the average world temperature, specifically the year 1750. However, machining would have several moments and a long duration. Factories require an immense amount of coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. It is the time of the beginning of the massive emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, of the economy of chimneys, of iron and steel, of the steam engine, of the thunderous locomotives that vibrate the earth in their path, of the novel ships that they do not need sails to navigate and the textile industry machines that spit out fabrics and dresses that flood the world at unbeatable prices. It is the City, which with its industrial air, colorless gray and black,its perennial soot and toxic smoke that makes breathing difficult draws the attention of early climate visionaries. Their concerns are based on the consequences that all this could have for the future.
XIX century. Scientists' concern begins to outline topics that would later be key to understanding climate change. These pioneers include Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who in 1824 used the analogy of the greenhouse for the first time. In 1859 John Tyndall discovers that carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and water vapor trap infrared radiation, which provides a relatively stable temperature on Earth, essential for life on our planet. In 1896 Svante Arrhenius proclaims that fossil fuels could accelerate global warming. In 1899 Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin develops in detail the idea that changes in climate could be the result of variations in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In the following decades,well into the twentieth century, Arrhenius and Chamberlin's assumptions would be dismissed, as the belief was maintained that CO2 did not influence the planet's temperature and the greenhouse effect was attributed exclusively to water vapor.
1860-1890. In the United States, a new phase of the Industrial Revolution begins to develop, which focuses on the agri-food sector, and not on textiles, as occurs on the other side of the Atlantic. Already in this period more land is used for cultivation in North America than in its entire history up to that time. Farms increase from two to six million, planted area doubles, wheat production rises from 173 to 635 million bushels, and corn and cotton harvests triple. The lowering of food costs and prices and the advances in medicine announce an accelerated growth of the human population.
1900. The world population stands at 1600 million inhabitants. From this moment on, there will be an explosive growth never seen before, which will extend throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
1930. The steam engine has given way to gasoline, diesel, and electric engines. A million new technology tractors are already operating in the United States these days. Combine harvesters, mechanical threshers, trucks and large combined machines powered by the newly released fuels are massively introduced. There is a second big change in the way the field is produced. The small family farm is no longer efficient and gives way to large specialized farms, dedicated to monoculture. This produces a massive exodus from the countryside to the city. Between 1870 and 1930 the rural population in the United States decreased from 80% to less than 40%, and then migration would continue at an even faster rate.
Historians Samuel Elliot Morison and Henry Steeler Commager, in their "History of the United States of America," give an early warning of damage to ecosystems caused by massive planting and harvesting techniques in the United States. Excessive extraction of subsoil products, intensive cultivation and destruction of forests causes erosions, droughts and floods. According to these authors, nearly forty million hectares, one sixth of the total surface of the southern United States, had been lost or damaged by erosions. Overproduction of food and population growth supersede Malthusian theories. The declaration of the Climate Emergency, 80 years later, is the other side of the coin of Malthus' fears.
1930-1950. Supermachines are scattered throughout the world, especially after World War II, and the story is similar to that of the United States. As many forests disappear, cities are nourished by waves of people arriving from the countryside in search of better opportunities. The increasing amount of agricultural machinery, cargo transportation, automobiles and planes that use the new fossil fuels are increasing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
1950-1955. Gilbert Norman Plass, a Canadian physicist, another concerned with the future, performs new calculations on infrared radiation at the beginning of the decade. In 1955 he published his results, in which he concluded that CO2 emissions affect the climate and can modify it over time.
1952, December 5-9. In the British capital an unprecedented environmental pollution event surprises Londoners. The Great London Fog of 1952 is a phenomenon that obscures the city with heavy smoke, caused by excessive and uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels in industry and transport. The phenomenon is believed to have killed 12,000 people and left another 100,000 ill.
1957. Concerns about the effects of fossil fuels continue. Roger Revelle and Hans Suess suggest that emissions of gases by human activities would increase the "greenhouse effect", which would cause global warming over time. The Hammond Times describes Revelle's research and warns about the effects of large-scale CO2 use. Use the terms "global warming" and "climate change". Their warnings, as in previous alerts, would be long forgotten. The 1960s are not very newsworthy on these issues.
1960. The world population has almost doubled since 1900, rising to 3 billion inhabitants.
1967. Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald use new digital equipment and perform the first detailed calculation of the greenhouse effect. They find that, in the absence of unknown regenerations such as cloud changes and doubling of current carbon dioxide levels, they would lead to a global temperature rise of approximately 2 ° C.
1972. At the initiative of Sweden, in conjunction with the UN, the "First Earth Summit", known as the "United Nations Conference on the Human Environment" is held. Out of it comes the "Stockholm Declaration", which has been compared to the Declaration of Human Rights. The document is oriented to the normalization of the relationships of human beings with the environment.
1970-1990. The ink of the Stockholm Declaration had not dried when one of the world's greatest ecological catastrophes began. In Borneo, the third largest island on the planet, shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, hostile deforestation is taking place over the huge jungle of Southeast Asia. For decades Indonesia has become the world's number one exporter of timber, ahead of the Amazon and Africa together. The empty spaces left by the trees are occupied with the oil palm, known for its negative environmental impact. Borneo would soon become the world's largest palm oil exporter.
The rain forest, lung of Asia, where humidity and mud made it difficult to light a fire, in just 30 years it becomes a dry and arid place, where dozens of fires occur daily, whose influence reaches far-flung regions.
Dr. Lisa Curran, a renowned scientist who spent twenty years in Borneo studying its climate, extensively documented the extreme changes suffered on the island. We can affirm that in Borneo the first local climate change of our planet occurred in modern times.
1974. Mario Molina, Mexican scientist and Frank Sherwood Rowland, American scientist, demonstrate for the first time that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) lower the ozone layer, essential for life on Earth.
1975. Wallace Smith Broecker publishes a scientific article: "Climate change: Are we on the verge of pronounced global warming?" Since then, both names begin to be used with increasing frequency.
1979. The National Academy of Sciences of the United States, headed by Jule Charney, describes the effects of CO2 in a broad way, relating its use to increased global warming.
1988. James Hansen, a NASA climatologist, testifies before the United States Senate that human-caused warming had already significantly affected the global climate.
1989, January 1. The Montreal Protocol enters into force. Two years earlier, representatives from 43 nations signed the key document to reduce the holes in the ozone layer. They pledged to maintain 1986 CFC production levels and reduce them by 50% in 1999. Montreal is successful, but would be delayed several times. CFCs are the gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and atomizer thrusters. The ozone layer has the property of filtering ultraviolet rays, protecting the skin from cancer, the eyes of the cataract, among other syndromes.
1992. "The Second Earth Summit" is held in Rio de Janeiro. The "Rio Declaration" is issued, reaffirmation of the "Stockholm Declaration", approved 20 years earlier. The creation of the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” (UNFCCC) is approved. In addition, the need to preserve biodiversity according to sustainability criteria is discussed. As a consequence, the International Convention on Biological Diversity is promulgated.
1994, March. COPs are born, the conferences of the parties. The COP is the supreme body of the newly created UNFCCC. Its purpose is to provide practicality to its primary objective, the stabilization of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere.
1995. COP1 is held in the city of Bonn. Since then a COP is held every year.
1997, COP3, Kyoto. In this kind and beautiful Japanese city the Kyoto Protocol is born, with a built-in death date. It is the first universal document created to regulate human activities in relation to GHG emissions. In Kyoto, binding targets are set for 37 industrialized countries. It is agreed that it will enter into force in 2009 and its expiration date will be pre-marked for 2012, establishing that developed countries should reduce their emissions by 5% compared to the 1990 level. Two of the largest emitters, the United States and China, they do not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
1998. The United States drills its first well using commercial fracking. Hydraulic fracturing, as it is also known, is an unconventional procedure to obtain oil and gas from shales or shales. By combining vertical and horizontal drilling, it is possible to reach the coveted fuels that were hidden in the earth's bed, between 3,000 and 5,000 meters deep. Its near-surface peers are on the way to exhaustion. The International Energy Agency has indicated that the United States could become the largest oil producer in 2018, thanks to the fracking method.
2000. The world population has doubled for the second time in the 20th century. An unprecedented fact in human history. Growth since 1960 has been from 3 billion to 6 billion inhabitants.
2000. Paul Crutzen coined the name Anthropocene to designate a new geological epoch that would cancel the Holocene, an era in which we currently live, started 12,000 years ago. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, specializing in atmospheric chemistry, affirms that human activities have begun to cause biological and geophysical changes on a planetary scale.
However, as the Anthropocene denomination does not comply with the traditional nomenclature of stratigraphy, geologists do not accept to define it as a geological epoch.
2007, November 21. Mongabay Latam, reports that since 1970 more than 600,000 square km of forests have been destroyed in the Amazon jungle, almost 10%. Today that figure is around 20%.
2009, COP15, Copenhagen. In this fifteenth installment of the POPs, humanity had immense hope. It was thought that the Danish capital would be given the privilege to deliver the good news to the world by announcing the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. In quantifiable terms it meant reducing CO2 emissions to less than 50% by 2050 compared to 1990. The euphoria is short-lived. With three weeks to go before the start of COP15, a meeting is held in Thailand, in which China and the United States decide that the Copenhagen accords would not be binding, so that the fate of the Summit was cast before it began.
It was very bad news, and the few hopes of saving her were buried last night, when the presidents of China, the United States, India, Brazil and South Africa, without the presence of the European representatives, nor the other countries, held a meeting at the door closed and in just three pages they write a non-binding agreement that is not even put to the vote. Finally, it is only exposed to the "knowledge" of the attendees, together with the promise that in 2010 they would work on a political platform, the basis for building binding legal commitments. The summit, as is to be expected, was described as failure and disaster by many governments and environmental organizations.
2009-2015. During this period, scientists Johan Rockström from Sweden and Will Steffen from the United States, together with scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Center, compile a list with “nine limits of the planet that would be extremely dangerous to cross, an issue that has already occurred in the case of four of them ”. These limits are: climate, alteration of vegetation cover, extinction of animal species and alteration of biogeochemical flows, in which the cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen play an essential role.
The other five borders correspond to consumption of primary resources, energy use, population growth, economic activity and deterioration of the biosphere. According to the report, since the Second World War these limits have soared that some have called it the "time of the great acceleration", with an emphasis on the 1950s. Others even speak of "hyper acceleration" in the 1970s. All these trends have been described as "unsustainable". In 1946 none of the nine limits had yet been crossed, and "humanity consumed less than one planet", as indicated by Unesco, which collects all this information in one of its publications. It affirms that "in those two moments it would have been possible to undertake another path, but today it is much more difficult to do so".
2010, September 22. The high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly states that the agreements reached eight years earlier at the Third Earth Summit, South Africa 2002, regarding the preservation of biodiversity were not fulfilled. 190 countries signed the Convention on Biological Diversity for 2010 but did not comply. Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Program, expressed failure in this lapidary phrase: "We have fabricated the illusion that we can somehow remain without biodiversity, or that it is secondary in the modern world "
Ten years later, in 2019, the report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), would report that one million animal and plant species, of the eight million that exist, are threatened with extinction. An "unprecedented decline" in modern times.
2011. Following the Fukushima accident, German Chancellor Angela Merkel orders the closure of the country's 17 nuclear power plants. The closing of the last floor would take place in 2022.
2011, COP17 Durban. Birth of the Kyoto Protocol-II and beginning of his death. The fate of the planet was no better than in South Africa the previous year, although some progress was made by establishing a date for the start of the second period of the Kyoto agreements, with a view to 2013, to avoid a legal vacuum in the matter of Change Climate.
2013, COP19. Warsaw. The initial goal in Poland was to reach an agreement to reduce GHG emissions from 2015. However, several countries opposed it, including the host, the largest coal producer in Europe. On this occasion the UN presented a document where it is assured with almost absolute certainty that the human being is the main cause of global warming, since the 1950s. In the face of this new failure, the massive abandonment of NGOs and unions occurs, previously unheard of at COPs.
2014, September 20. The newspaper El País, from Spain, indicates: “A report by Greenpeace Brazil, published in May, documents up to five different ways of laundering illegally obtained wood. According to IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), in the States of Maranhão and Pará alone, almost 500,000 cubic meters of wood had false documents in 2013 ”.
2015, COP21, Paris. The Paris Agreement is born, the most ambitious world agreement to fight against Climate Change. Adopted by 197 countries, its signature officially begins on April 22 of the following year. Its entry into force is scheduled for 2020. The Agreement contemplates limiting the increase in world temperature to 2º C, from its pre-industrial level, by reducing GHG emissions. By means of the premise "Zero fossil fuels", it is intended to replace these with renewable, alternative or clean energy. The Paris Agreement proposes measures to fight climate change such as adaptation, mitigation and resilience.
2016, October 26. 400 PPM, (Parts Per Million) of CO2 in the atmosphere is reached for the first time since humans appeared on Earth. This proves that climate change is caused by humans, since in 1950 its level was 320 PPM. On 29-04-2018, another record was reached, according to the Mauna Loa Observatory, located in Hawaii, with 411.26 PPM. On May 13, Mauna Loa reported that the CO2 level was rising again, reaching 415 PPM.
2017, June 1. Donald Trump announces the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, although the northern country must remain two more years, according to the document's statutes.
2017. The world population increases 25% compared to 2000, reaching 7,500 million inhabitants.
2017. For the first time two hurricanes, Irma and María, acquire category 5 in the Atlantic Ocean, before moving to the Caribbean. This unprecedented fact raises suspicions about the relationship of global warming and the intensification of cyclonic systems.
2017. The production and sale of electric cars is increasing. The quiet, decarbonised car is the hope of a world free of smog, noise, and gases that increase disease and global warming. Encouraging news about electromobility is beginning to arrive. In 2019 China sets a 10% sales quota for hybrid vehicles. 2020 Volkswagen plans to place 25% of electric cars. By 2025 Volvo aims to produce 20% and Mercedes Benz between 20% and 25%. Norway indicates 2025 for the ban on automotive gasoline traffic. France will do so in 2040. The global cap year for the elimination of emitting vehicles is 2050, to comply with the provisions of the Paris Agreement.
2018. The temperature in Siberia marks a record when reaching 40ºC during the summer of this year.
2018, May. The Extinction Rebellion (XR) is established in the UK, a socio-political movement, mainly made up of young people, that uses non-violent resistance to protest against climate degradation, loss of biodiversity and the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse. XR aims to rally support globally around the urgency of tackling climate collapse.
2018, June 5. We should not focus on what they say but on what they do. The newspaper El País, from Spain, headlines: "Trudeau, champion of the environmental discourse, gives a strong boost to the oil industry." The Canadian government announces the nationalization of the Trans Mountain pipeline to ensure its expansion, drawing criticism from politicians, indigenous groups, and NGOs.
2018, June 5. The UN, in an article entitled “Either we divorce plastic, or we forget the planet,” reports that nearly 13 million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans each year, affecting biodiversity, the economy and our health.
“The qualities of this cheap, light and easy to produce material have led to its production reaching quantities that we are unable to cope with. Only a small fraction of the plastics that are discarded is recycled. ”
2018. There is encouraging news about the constant increase in electricity generation through solar and wind energy worldwide. This, due to the constant lowering of costs and prices. The replacement of fossil fuel-based energy with clean or green energy, added to the rise of the electric car, constitute humanity's hope for a better world for all.
2018, August 20. Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager of just 15 years old, a ninth-grade student, stops attending school until her country's general elections on September 9. Claim the heat wave and forest fires in Sweden. Demand that the government reduce carbon emissions based on the provisions of the Paris Agreement. Their protest consists of sitting every day in front of the Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament, holding a sign with the text: “school strike for the climate”. In the images of those days you see a small girl, childlike in appearance, an oval face, little smile, Nordic braids, sitting on a gray brick floor, the same color of the wall that supports her back. She wears a red, blue, and white plaid shirt, brown cotton pants, and blue rubber shoes.She is seen lonely, only with her purple backpack as company. No one seems to care about her or the backpack, nor the poster that motivates her sittings: "Skolstrejk for klimatet", despite the fact that it is a white sign, of good size and handwritten spellings readable from afar.
2018, September 09. After the elections Greta returns to school, but continues her sit-ins, only on Fridays. No one imagines that this creature in a few months would become the world climate leader and inspire millions of young people to carry out massive demonstrations for climate change, in hundreds of cities on five continents. Little by little, other young people approaching her in their Friday sit-ins. From week to week the schoolchildren grow in number, they stop attending school that day and together with Greta they lead the school strikes on Fridays. This is the origin of the movement "Friday For Future" (FFF), "Friday for the Future", in Spanish "Youth for the future", which in record time wins supporters around the planet.
2018, October. The World Wide Fund (WWF), in its biannual report “Living Planet”, its flagship publication, publishes a Report that shakes the planet. The world population of vertebrates - mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles - has decreased by 60% between 1970 and 2014. As a solution, it raises the need to reach a global agreement by nature. The main threats are "directly related to human activities, including habitat loss and degradation and overexploitation of wild fisheries." In this way, "resources are consumed as if we were on 1.7 planets Earth."
2018, October 1-5. In the city of Incheon, South Korea, the 48th Session of the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is held. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report was presented at this meeting, whose main objective is to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5ºC from its pre-industrial level, instead of the 2ºC proposed in the Paris Agreement. According to this report, this goal will require "unprecedented changes" at the social and global level, due to the seriousness of the planet's situation due to the sustained increase in world temperature, with all its consequences.
2018, November 11-24. Greta Thunberg performs at TEDx Stockholm. TED is the acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design, a US organization dedicated to "Ideas Worth Spreading." In addition to these three themes, a wide variety of aspects are covered, such as science and politics. Speakers included Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google, among many others. Greta gives an emotional speech, which immediately catapults her to another level and she is worth being invited to COP24.
2018, COP24, Katowice, December 3-14. The controversy that occurred at COP24 this time did not revolve around the Paris Agreement directly, but about the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, and its main objective of limiting the rise in temperatures to 1.5ºC from its pre-industrial level. An oil quartet made up of the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait does not welcome the report. The United States argues that welcoming it means accepting it. President Trump is blunt in expressing that he does not agree with the IPCC report, nor does he believe in its content. The representative of Saudi Arabia went further and behind the scenes dares to say, "The Paris Agreement is dead."
WWF Spain summarizes what happened in Poland: “world leaders came to Katowice with the task of responding to the latest data from climate science, which has made it very clear that we only have 12 years to cut emissions in half and avoid warming catastrophic global. Progress has been made, but what we have seen in Poland reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the current climate urgency on the part of some countries. Everyone's future is at stake. We need all countries to commit to increasing climate ambition by 2020. ”
One of the most emotional moments at COP24 is the intervention by Greta Thunberg: “you only talk about infinite green economic growth because you are afraid of appearing too unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that have gotten us into this mess. Even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. ” Greta's appearance multiplies through the screens of the world, making her known throughout the planet. The focus on the girl would grow and she would soon be a global climate influencer.
2018, December. During this month, inspired by Greta Thunberg, young school children from around the world participate in student strikes. They hold demonstrations in more than 270 cities in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In Australia, thousands of students decide to protest on Fridays, ignoring Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Who exhorts them to: "more learning in schools and less activism."
2018, December. Mongabay headlines a report "Deforestation in Brazil reached its highest level in the last ten years." Indicates as main causes for the increasing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, “the expansion of agriculture and livestock farming on a large scale, which has its main representatives in soybeans and cattle; increased investments in infrastructure such as road construction and government policy decisions.
2018, December 28. Germany sends a positive message to the world. It closes its last coal mine, after 200 years of this activity. Through an emotional act, the Prosper-Haniel mine in the town of Bottrop was closed. Chancellor Angela Merkel has received a symbolic gift from the miners.
2019, January 2. A few hours after taking office, the new President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, launches an attack against the environmental protections of the Amazon. It issues an executive order that transfers regulation and the creation of indigenous reserves to the ministry of agriculture, which is controlled by the powerful ruralist lobby. Many indigenous communities are expelled from their natural places. The closure that weighed on many sanctuaries is lifted to allow deforestation.
2019, January 24. Greta Thunberg is presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, "which brings together the main leaders of international organizations, leaders of various countries, business leaders and people of worldwide repute." On February 12, the young woman would make a public complaint about rumors, lies and hate messages circulating about her, her family and her activism, with the aim of discrediting her. They claim that the speeches were not written by her, but that there are adults involved who would be manipulating her, talking about payments to her family for leading the strikes, and even mocking her Asperger syndrome. “Some people make fun of me for my diagnosis (made when I was 11 years old). But Asperger - he says - is not a disease, it is a gift ”.On April 16, he would deliver an emotional speech before the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament.
2019, March 15. This Friday there is a world student strike, supported by Greta who is now 16 years old (date of birth: 03-01-2003). According to Wikipedia "The strike was devised and led by the Fridays For Future movement… The world march was held in several cities in a total of 123 countries worldwide, in 2000 demonstrations, most of which were held in organized and peaceful way. In total, the 15-M march brought together between 1.5 and 2 million people worldwide, in which the participation of 12,000 German, Swiss and Austrian scientists stood out. ”
2019 April. Extinction Rebellion occupies several iconic sites in central London for ten days: Oxford Circus, Marble Arch, Waterloo Bridge and the area around Parliament Square. A year earlier, over a hundred academics had signed a call to action.
2019, April 19. The AFP news agency points out: Landowners cut ancient trees to plant soybeans, practice clandestine mining and denounce the contamination of rivers with mercury, vital for the inhabitants of remote areas, traffic in woods that decimate rare and valuable species. "The threat to biodiversity can take different faces in this country of continental dimensions." If we look in the mirror of Borneo, and take into account the alarming news from Brazil, we can anticipate the ecological catastrophe that would be the destruction of the world's lung if we do not stop it in time.
2019, April. Nonsense human things: climate change seems to please some. This is clear from the news that arrives these days. They refer to new shipping routes in the Arctic, due to thawing, thanks to global warming. Some shipping companies celebrate saving time and money because these routes are shorter than traditional ones.
2019, April 24. Teen Greta Thunberg appears before the stale British Parliament. It is not anything to be received by the kingdom's House of Commons. Greta addresses the deputies in the tone of a teacher who teaches, scolds and sends homework to her students. Her forceful speech, her particular irreverent girlish language and her gestures cause different types of reactions in the parliamentarians. The important thing is that she achieves her goal. Here are some excerpts from her speech:
“My name is Greta Thunberg, I am 16 years old, I am Swedish and I have come to speak to you on behalf of future generations… I know that many of you do not want to hear us. You say we are only children. But we only repeat the message of science on climate… Many of you seem to be concerned to see how we lose valuable class time, but I assure you that we will return to the institute as soon as you begin to listen to science and give us a future. Does that seem like a lot to ask?… You lied to us. You have given us false hope. You have told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children do not even know the fate that awaits us. We won't understand until it's too late…
Is the microphone on? Can you hear me –He repeated the phrase several times during his speech, at the same time he tapped the device to attract attention.
2019, May 1. One week after Greta's speech the British Parliament declares a state of Climate Emergency. The motion was presented to Parliament by Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, in favor of "urgent action to safeguard the health of the planet for future generations." The Labor Party came to this decision, also taking into account the pressure from the youth of the Extinction Rebellion, whose most recent actions were the protests that paralyzed central London for ten days. With their fight to curb climate change, they helped make the London decision, raising the climate issue to the top of British politics. As we have already said: the Climate Emergency has lifted people who stayed out of the problem from lethargy.
Final words
The Youth and Adolescents Revolution has begun. New actors were needed who can look at the world from a different perspective. You are most interested in climate change not making life on the planet unbearable. Since we are Earth activists 15 years ago, it is the first time that we see light at the end of the tunnel. A dim light, because the accumulated damages are enormous and not easy to reverse, as recorded in this work.
Thanks to Greta for having the merit of being the initiator of this important movement. But there are many leaders who are emerging and will emerge in all parts of the world, as we are seeing in the videos. Many activists are needed. It seems that your movement is going to be unstoppable. But be careful, there are dozens of factors that can cause it to deflate. But you, boys and girls of the newest generation, have much more courage than the previous ones.
We wish you:
Let them use their movement to make sense of their lives. Keep them updated on the planet's problems. That they become the generation of knowledge, since we have spent several decades in which knowledge is despised. This has been part of the problem. Only with the possession of knowledge can a movement of this nature be sustained for a long time. It is important that they know how to transmit what they have learned to others who know less. Have a toolbox full of arguments on hand to disarm denialists and others trying to shut the door on your future. We also wish you to stick together. Don't get tired. Don't be fanatical. Let them not adopt a single thought. That they do not turn their movement into a political party or religion. Make them tolerant of their peers.Let them practice democracy. That they do not deviate from the origin that gave birth to their movement. Keep pressing.
We wish them the best of luck. The Earth can be saved.
Hopefully these words can reach the majority.
