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Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old activist, has been making waves worldwide for her speeches to political leaders on climate change.
Her most recent visit was to the UK Houses of Parliament to speak to MPs, telling them her generation’s future had been “sold” so that “a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money”.
She told the packed room: “It was stolen from us every time you said ‘the sky is the limit’ and ‘you only live once’. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to”.
Continuing, “You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before”.
Greta criticised the UK’s response to climate change saying: “The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels, like for example the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports, as well as the planning permission for a brand new coalmine, is beyond absurd.”
Before her speech, she met with party leaders including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a roundtable discussion. Prime minister Theresa May declined to attend. In a tweet after the discussion, Corbyn said: “Young people will be the most affected by climate change-seeing them take charge of their future is inspiring.”
Earlier in the month, an estimated 1.6 million students skipped school to protest about the worldwide inaction to climate change which prompted criticism from some about the education which had been lost. In response to this Greta said: “I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?”
She finished her speech by saying, “We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.
“I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me”.
Read Greta’s full speech here.
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