WEBVTT

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I never planned
to become a climate activist,

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but now things have changed,

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and now, standing here
as a climate activist,

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I ask you all to become one too.

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Here's why,

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and most importantly, how.

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Ten years ago, when I was 13 years old,

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I first learned about
the greenhouse effect.

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Back then, we spent
90 minutes on this issue,

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and I remember finding it quite irritating

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that something so fundamental

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would be squeezed
into a single geography lesson.

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Some of this irritation remained,
so when I graduated from high school,

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I decided to study geography

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just to make sure I was on the right track
with this whole climate change thing.

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And this is when everything changed.

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This was the first time
I looked at the data,

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at the science behind the climate crisis,

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and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

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Like many of you,

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I thought that the planet
wasn't really in a good state.

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I had no idea that we are rushing
into this self-made disaster

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in such rapid pace.

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There was also the first time
I understood what difference it makes

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when you consider the bigger picture.

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Take the CO2 concentration
in the atmosphere, for instance,

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the number one driver for global warming.

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Yes, this looks bad.

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This looks like we are on
a pretty bad track,

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but it's only once you don't
just consider the last 60 years,

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but the last 10,000 years,

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that you understand
how terrifying this really is.