No one is too small to make a difference

A collection of articulate, forceful speeches made from September 2018 to September 2019 by the Swedish climate activist who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.Speaking in such venues as the European and British Parliaments, the French National Assembly, the Austrian World Summit, and the U.N. General Assembly, Thunberg has always been refreshinglyand necessarilyblunt in her demands for action from world leaders who refuse to address climate change. With clarity and unbridled passion, she presents her message that climate change is an emergency that must be addressed immediately, and she fills her speeches with punchy sound bites delivered in her characteristic pull-no-punches style: "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." In speech after speech, to persuade her listeners, she cites uncomfortable, even alarming statistics about global temperature rise and carbon dioxide emissions. Although this inevitably makes the text rather repetitive, the repetition itself has an impact, driving home her point so that no one can fail to understand its importance. Thunberg varies her style for different audiences. Sometimes it is the rousing "our house is on fire" approach; other times she speaks more quietly about herself and her hopes and her dreams. When addressing the U.S. Congress, she knowingly calls to mind the words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. The last speech in the book ends on a note that is both challenging and upbeat: "We are the change and change is coming." The edition published in Britain earlier this year contained 11 speeches; this updated edition has 16, all worth reading.A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Our Lives Are in Your Hands Climate March Stockholm, September 8, 2018 Last summer, a number of leading climate scientists wrote that we have at most three years to reverse growth in greenhouse-gas emissions if we're going to reach the goals set in the Paris Agreement. Over a year and two months have now passed, and in that time many other scientists have said the same thing and a lot of things have got worse and greenhouse-gas emissions continue to increase. So maybe we have even less time than the one year and ten months those scientists said we have left. If people knew this they wouldn't need to ask me why I'm so 'passionate about climate change'. If people knew that the scientists say that we have a 5 percent chance of meeting the Paris target, and if people knew what a nightmare scenario we will face if we don't keep global warming below 2 ° C, they wouldn't need to ask me why I'm on school strike outside parliament. Because if everyone knew how serious the situation is and how little is actually being done, everyone would come and sit down beside us. In Sweden, we live our lives as if we had the resources of 4.2 planets. Our individual carbon footprint is one of the worst in the world. This means that Sweden steals 3.2 years of natural resources from future generations every year. Those of us who are part of these future generations would like Sweden to stop doing that. Right now. This is not a political text. Our school strike has nothing to do with party politics. Because the climate and the biosphere don't care about our politics and our empty words for a single second. They only care about what we actually do. This is a cry for help. To all the newspapers who still don't write about and report on climate change, even though they said that the climate was 'the critical question of our time' when the Swedish forests were burning this summer. To all of you who have never treated this crisis as a crisis. To all the influencers who stand up for everything except the climate and the environment. To all the political parties that pretend to take the climate question seriously. To all the politicians that ridicule us on social media, and have named and shamed me so that people tell me that I'm retarded, a bitch and a terrorist, and many other things. To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself. Your silence is almost worst of all. The future of all the coming generations rests on your shoulders. Those of us who are still children can't change what you do now once we're old enough to do something about it. A lot of people say that Sweden is a small country, that it doesn't matter what we do. But I think that if a few girls can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could do together if we wanted to. Every single person counts. Just like every single emission counts. Every single kilo. Everything counts. So please, treat the climate crisis like the acute crisis it is and give us a future. Our lives are in your hands. Excerpted from No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.