“I am here to say; our house is on fire”
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist. In August 2018, Thunberg, a ninth grad student, started a protest outside the Swedish parliament holding a sign “Skolstrejk för klimatet" (School Strike fort the climate). She urged the parliament to take immediate action to protect the environment. Reducing carbon missions per the Paris Agreement was one of her demands. Since then, she has become known as a young environmental activist around the world. Thunberg has said that she has been inspired by young American activists who organized the ‘March for Our Lives’ demonstration.
In November 2018, inspired by Thunberg, student strikes began around the globe. By December, the strikes reached in more than 270 cities in different countries such as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, UK and the USA. The school strikes reached to 130 countries in 2019 and thousands of demonstrations.
In 2019, the movement was very widespread, and in addition to the mentioned countries, student strikes began in other places as well. In February 2019, 224 academics in the UK signed an open later in support of student strikes started by Thunberg, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres backed the strikes and said that “My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry.” The President of the European Commission said in his speech next to Greta Thunberg, that he is eager to spend hundreds of billions of Euro on climate change.
There were around 155 local WhatsApp and social media groups founded across Germany, campaigning against climate changes, at the beginning of 2019. The Minister of Environment of Belgium resigned on February 5, 2019 due to his false claim saying, the school strikes in Belgium were a “set-up”. On March 5, 2019, 700 German-speaking researchers released a statement in support of strikes, and the statement was signed by 26800 academicians in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. An open letter, signed by 16000 European climate strikers, was submitted to several European leaders during a European Union Summit on May 9, 2019.
In March, April, and June 2019, again strikes began around the world. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren joined the movement. On June 21, 2019, around 10 – 20 thousand people from 17 countries joined a protest in Aachen, Germany. Before the demonstration, the city of Aachen had declared a “Climate Emergency” following other German cities.
Since the beginning of school strikes, Thunberg has participated in various international meetings and has given speeches in several European cities, such as TEDxStockholm in November 2018, COP24 summit in December 2018, World Economic Forum in January 2019, at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee in February 2019, Berlin event in March, in a meeting at the European Parliament in April, and at Austrian World Summit R20 in May 2019, where she met Arnold Schwarzenegger, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen. Thunberg has received several awards due to her campaign against climate change and an honorary degree from the University of Mons, Belgium.