Jamie Margolin - Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It

The first time I heard of Jamie Margolin was in May 2018. We were a group of young people who were trying to organize a Zero Hour march in Sweden for the international day of action on July 21. It was just a few weeks before I started school striking outside the Swedish parliament.

Before that I basically hadnt met any young person who seemed to care about the climate, the environment, or our future survival on this planet. My idea of the youth today was that we were lazy, self-centered, and didnt spare the climate and ecological crisis even a second of our thoughts. I remember feeling so alone, it seemed as if no one my age saw what was going on around us or even wanted to make a differenceapart from people like Jamie Margolin.

Since then, I have been proven wrong over and over again. It turned out that countless young people felt just like I did. That our generation wanted to not only change the world but also save it. We just didnt know how. We didnt know how to turn our frustration and despair into something that could help push us in the right direction. And that, I think, is whats holding us back from taking action and stepping out of our comfort zones.

The more people I meet, the more I travel and get to experience, the more convinced I am that the solution to the climate and ecological crisisas well as to many other crisesis simple: it is the people.

Above all, the young people. The power we hold within us is invincible. It is we who together are going to solve this. What we need to do now is to figure out a way to channel that power and that strength into action.

I think that tipping point we are all waiting for will happen when we the youth truly realize what we together can accomplish. I know we will pass that point sooner or later, and deep down you probably know it too. The question is just when that tipping point will come and whether it will come in time.

Since Zero Hour started, things have begun to move. But not nearly enough. And somehow it seems like we still are stuck. So right now we are in desperate need of guidance and something that tells us what the nextor sometimes even the firststeps are and how to take them. That is why we need books like this one.

We need to be given the tools with which we can change the world. And in this book, you can find them.

Greta Thunberg

November 12, 2019

Greta Thunberg was born in 2003. In August 2018 she started a school strike that became a movement called Fridays for Future, which has inspired school strikes for climate action in more than 150 countries, involving millions of students. Thunberg has spoken at climate rallies across Europe and at the United Nations COP24 in Poland and the World Economic Forum in Davos. In September 2019 she spoke in New York City at the UN Climate Action Summit. She has won the prestigious Prix Libert and been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.