"Dear Mr. Trump..."
16-year-old Greta Thunberg has a message for the president on climate responsibility. The Swedish activist shared with Brut what she'd say to him — as well as her goal for saving the planet.
16-year-old Greta Thunberg has a message for the president on climate responsibility. The Swedish activist shared with Brut what she'd say to him — as well as her goal for saving the planet.
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00:00Dear Mr. Trump, I know a lot of people have tried to convince you that the climate crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced,
00:09and yet that has not seemed to be working.
00:12I think you should know that if you don't take action now, you are going to be seen as one of the worst villains in human history.
00:31You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future.
00:45The first time I heard about it was maybe when I was eight years old,
00:50and my teachers in school told me about this and they showed us films and pictures
00:57of starving polar bears and plastic in the ocean, and I was really affected by that.
01:02I became very sad, and I thought it was very strange.
01:07I wondered why this could be, how this could be, that there was an existential crisis
01:14that would threaten our civilization and our existence, and yet that wasn't our first priority.
01:23We were focusing on other things, and we were basically not talking about it.
01:30The turning point in my life where I decided that I was going to do something about the climate crisis
01:36was maybe when I was eleven, and then I became ill.
01:42I fell into a depression, and then I thought to myself that I should do something about it.
01:51I thought to myself that I can do so much good with my life instead,
01:56and this is just a waste of time to feel like this,
02:00and so then I decided to do something with my life to try to make a difference.
02:06When I first told my parents about my idea with school striking, they weren't very fond of the idea.
02:13They said, isn't there anything else you can do to try to change things and to make your voice heard?
02:20I said, no, I'm going to do this, because I had made up my mind,
02:24and I wasn't going to let anyone tell me not to do it.
02:28I have said that I will stand here outside the Swedish Parliament every Friday
02:33until Sweden is in line with the Paris Agreement,
02:37and when everyone starts realizing that we are facing an existential crisis.
02:43Some people ask me if I am hopeful or pessimistic or optimistic,
02:50and I say that I am realistic.
02:52I say that this is what I need to do, and this is what I have to do to be able to do that,
02:58and so then I just decide to do that, because once I decide to do something, I do it, and I complete it.
03:09My message to young people is that we need to realize what the older generations have done to us
03:17and keep doing in this very moment, and will not stop until something happens,
03:23and we need to hold them accountable for this mess they have created,
03:27and we need to make our voices heard and get angry, and then transform that anger into action.