16-Year-Old Swede Has a Message for Modi

Brut India

"Dear Mr. Modi..." Greta Thunberg has a message for the Prime Minister on climate responsibility. The 16-year-old is a climate activist who has inspired thousands of young people worldwide to fight climate change. She spoke to Brut India about her goal of saving the planet.

Transcript

00:00Dear Mr Modi, you need to take action now against the climate crisis, not just talking

00:14about it, because if you keep on going like this, doing business as usual, and just talking

00:20about and bragging about the little victories, you are going to fail, and if you fail, you

00:28are going to be seen as one of the worst villains in human history, in the future, and you don't

00:34want that.

00:50You are not mature enough to tell it like it is, even that burden you leave to us children.

00:58Our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people

01:05to continue making enormous amounts of money.

01:08You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front

01:14of their very eyes.

01:28I first became aware of the climate crisis, the first time I heard about it was maybe

01:50when I was eight years old, and my teachers in school told me about this, and they showed

01:57us films and pictures of starving polar bears and plastic in the ocean, and I was really

02:04affected by that.

02:05I became very sad, and I thought it was very strange.

02:12I wondered why this could be, how this could be, that there was an existential crisis that

02:21would threaten our civilisation and our existence, and yet that wasn't our first priority.

02:28I think the turning point in my life where I decided that I was going to do something

02:33about the climate crisis was maybe when I was eleven, and then I became ill.

02:40I fell into a depression, and then I thought to myself that I can do so much good with

02:50my life instead, and this is just a waste of time to feel like this, and so then I decided

02:57to do something with my life to try to make a difference.

03:02When I first told my parents about my idea with school striking, they weren't very fond

03:08of the idea, they said, isn't there anything else you can do to try to change things and

03:14to make your voice heard, and I said, no, I'm going to do this, because I had made up

03:20my mind and I wasn't going to let anyone tell me not to do it.

03:24My message to young people is that we need to realise what the older generations have

03:31done to us and keep doing in this very moment, and will not stop until something happens,

03:38and we need to hold them accountable for this mess they have created and expect us to live

03:43with and clean up in the future, and we need to make our voices heard and get angry, and

03:51then transform that anger into action.

03:53If we don't take action now, then we're screwed.

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