Greta Thunberg’s climate change activism goes global

BATHINDA: We had no inkling about the impact of global warming on earth or our societies. It is only after Greta Thunberg started skipping school and raising her voice for reduction in carbon emissions that we got to know how the climate change is impacting even our own lives and we started following her and supporting the cause. Now it has become a mission for us to raise concern about the degrading environment which needs to be safeguarded, assert a students from Stockholm, where activist Greta Thunberg belongs to. Though her colleagues initially did not support her but after Greta received global recognition for her climate change activism, she has now become an icon for Swedish students. Students from other European countries are following her as concern for climate change is growing.


It is not only Sweden but the impact of the cause, spelt out by the 16-year-old climate change activist, is now being felt across Europe, Latin America, South Africa and Asia. Youngsters from almost all European countries are coming to the streets to raise their voice along with Greta. The chorus is rapidly growing the world over as students are waiting for September 20 and 27 to support Greta's call for protests against rising carbon emissions.


Concerned by heat waves and wildfires making it the hottest summer in Sweden, class IX student Greta Thunberg for the first time skipped school on August 20, 2018 and sat outside the Swedish Parliament with a demand that the government reduce carbon emissions as per the Paris agreement. She sat for many days and the Fridays for future was initiated. It then went global with lakhs of children from across the world supporting the cause. The biggest protest has been scheduled for September 20, just three days ahead of crucial UN climate action summit. Greta will be raising her voice over climate change at United Nations on September 23.

It is the impact of Greta's stand that United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres has endorsed the school strikes asserting generations have failed to respond properly to climate change challenge. The global human rights campaigner Amnesty International secretary-general Kumi Naidoo has written to 30,000 schools across the world to let students hold protests for climate change on September 20 and 27. She has been nominated for 2019 Nobel Prize for Peace and has also been named as one of the world's 25 most influential teenagers of 2018.

Many youngsters - mainly girls from Europe, Latin America, South Africa - turning up at Stockholm in Sweden to act as assistants at World Water Week from August 25 to 30 to tone up their future careers in water and environmental science fields, raised their concern for environmental sustainability while talking to this correspondent. Youngsters from Sweden, Germany, Finland, Norway, Ecuador, Cuba (Latin America), Ghana, Nigeria (South Africa), Bangladesh, Bhutan (Asia) supported the cause as espoused by Greta Thunberg.

"I am here to learn about climate change and its impact on civilisations. I wanted to see how Stockholm is coping with climate change and why Greta felt the need to set up global protest base for climate change and reducing carbon emissions," said a Berlin-based girl Issaca. Oxford University student from Dhaka, Rabbani, said we are more prone to environmental disturbances than countries in the European Union yet they are more frequently raising their concern for climate change but we are still not taking it seriously and it is now that some concern is being shown in Asian counties. In India however, the students have not raised the concern at massive scale and not much protests have been planned.

"It is the impact of climate change that India is regularly witnessing floods and droughts. In the first 18 days of August we witnessed massive rains which is unprecedented., We are seeing floods at the times of droughts and many other abnormal aspects which should be seen as alarming", director general, Centre for Science and Environment, and noted environmentalist Sunita Narain told TOI.