Greta Thunberg - Greta Thunberg (I Know This to Be True)

I know this to be true

Dedicated to the legacy
and memory of
Nelson Mandela

First published in the United States of America in 2020 by Chronicle Books LLC.

Produced and originated by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-7972-0274-7 (pb)
ISBN 978-1-7972-0335-5 (epub, mobi)

Chronicle Books LLC
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People always tell us that they are so hopeful. They are hopeful that the young people are going to save the world. But we are not. There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge.

sat at her feet. She was fifteen. She was angry.

That summer had been Swedens hottest since records began over two hundred and sixty years ago.

It all began when she entered a climate writing competition for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier in the year. When her essay We know and we can do something now was announced as one of the winning entries,her first media attention. A fellow climate activist suggested she look to the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, USA, who skipped school to protest gun violence in the wake of a mass shooting. She was inspired. As a student, refusing to attend school was an effective way to draw attention to her cause.

That first day outside parliament she sat alone with her sign, her pamphlets and a packed lunch. She stayed for the full school day, from 8.30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and posted her activity on social media. During the first strike she was approached by local journalists, and when she returned the next day other people began to join her. Business professionals, politicians, tourists and ordinary people viewed the protest as they passed by, and the word spread quickly.

Stories about her efforts began to surface on major news outlets. When The Guardian published an article called The Swedish 15-year-old whos cutting class to fight the climate crisis in front of thousands of people. Some filmed her and shared it on social media. Soon she had tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of followers.

Every day for three weeks she maintained her post, rain or shine, and despite her parents initial disapproval. (Both are now fully supportive of their daughter, and have adopted mostly vegetarian diets and cut back on air travel.) Unsatisfied with the outcome of the Swedish general election, Thunberg resolved to resume striking on Fridays. I will go on with the school strike, she wrote on social media. Every Friday as from now I will sit outside the Swedish parliament until Sweden is in line with the Paris agreement. I urge all of you to do the same.... Time is much shorter than we think. Failure means disaster.

Thunberg learned of the realities of climate change when she was eight. She was horrified that no one including adults seemed to take it seriously. After discovering just how grave the planets future was, she became depressed. She stopped going to school, stopped eating and stopped talking. She was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism. The latter meant that she only spoke when necessary and when it came to the climate crisis, for Thunberg it was necessary.

Her resolve deepened when a 2018 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) She decided to make it her personal mission to bring to light the reality of this ever-looming climate crisis fallout.

Just a few months after she first sat down outside Swedish parliament, Thunbergs name and face was known around the world. Addressing crowds at major climate meetings including the 2019 World Economic Forumchallenged political figures and lawmakers to use their position to enact change. But while those in power should be doing more, Thunbergs own actions proved that every person is responsible.

Already her steadfast activism has made an irrevocable mark. Her school strikes have mobilized students in more than one hundred and fifty countries around the globe to hold protests of their own, culminating in a Global Climate Strike for Future which saw over 7 million youth take to the streets.

In 2019 she embarked on a two-week journey across the Atlantic Ocean aboard a sixty-foot zero-emission racing yacht to attend the United Nations (UN) Climate Action Summit in New York, USA. A large crowd greeted her on arrival, and with her feet safely on land she joined hundreds of youth in a mass protest outside the UN headquarters. Holding her skolstrejk fr klimatet sign she sat in the middle of the rally, surrounded by her American supporters with a single demand: urgent action on the climate crisis.

The moment proved Thunbergs far-reaching influence. Her defiance is the seed that planted the international youth movement against climate change arguably the most important movement the planet has encountered and is proof that a single person really can create meaningful change.

But her journey as a climate change activist is far from over. Transformation is underway, but progress is slow. Generating awareness may be easier in the age of social media, but fostering belief is more difficult. Many doubt the facts provided by scientific research, and Thunberg has come under personal attack from climate change sceptics and critics. Yet rather than deterring her, it has only strengthened her resolve. I have promised myself that Im going to do everything I can for as long as I can, she says.

What we do or dont do right now, me and my generation cant undo in the future.

My name is Greta Thunberg, I am sixteen years old and Im from Sweden.

I have a dream: that governments, political parties and corporations grasp the urgency of the climate and ecological crisis and come together despite their differences as you would in an emergency and take the measures required to safeguard the conditions for a dignified life for everybody on earth.