"I want you to act"

By Pete Crawford

Director of Learning & Engagement  

“Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Either we do that or we don’t.” 

These are the words of a 16 year old Swedish student, Greta Thunberg, who has inspired an international movement of young people.  This Friday will see the first national UK student strike to protest lack of government action to combat our climate crisis and sixth mass extinction event.  Students from secondary schools, colleges and universities are expected to gather in a mass protest in over 30 towns, including Brighton. 

The Department of Education has issued guidance which states:

 “We are clear that pupils can only take term-time leave in exceptional circumstances” .  However the students know that: 

• CO2 levels in the atmosphere are at their highest in the last 400,000 years
• The UN climate change report of 2018 stated that we only have 12 years to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to avoid human catastrophe
• It is estimated that 200 species become extinct every day
• Overfishing, pollution and ocean warming may lead to all fish consumed as seafood going extinct by 2048 

It is therefore entirely reasonable to decide that these are indeed ‘exceptional circumstances’.   But the last word must go to Greta Thunberg: 

“Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. 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. 

I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”

Greta Thunberg addresses the World Economic Forum 

Photo by World Economic Forum on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA