Why you should be a climate activist

I never planned
to become a climate activist,

but now things have changed,

and now, standing here
as a climate activist,

I ask you all to become one too.

Here's why,

and most importantly, how.

Ten years ago, when I was 13 years old,

I first learned about
the greenhouse effect.

Back then, we spent
90 minutes on this issue,

and I remember finding it quite irritating

that something so fundamental

would be squeezed
into a single geography lesson.

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

I decided to study geography

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

And this is when everything changed.

This was the first time
I looked at the data,

at the science behind the climate crisis,

and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

Like many of you,

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

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

in such rapid pace.

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

when you consider the bigger picture.

Take the CO2 concentration
in the atmosphere, for instance,

the number one driver for global warming.

Yes, this looks bad.

This looks like we are on
a pretty bad track,

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

but the last 10,000 years,

that you understand
how terrifying this really is.

And this is just one aspect
of the crisis we are seeing.

I'm not going to get into details here,
but let me tell you so much:

we are in a point of history

that the most destructive force
on the planet is humanity itself.

We are in a point of history

that no scientist could guarantee you
that you will survive this.

We are in a point of history

that humanity is creating an environment

that's not safe for humans anymore.

Yeah, there I was,

first year of a geography,

and pretty overwhelmed,

but there was good news.

The very same year
I first learned about all this,

leaders from across the globe
came together in Paris

to decide on the common target to limit
global warming to below two degrees.

Pictures went around the world,

and I was told that history
was made that day.

How relieving, right?

Except, something didn't quite
work out about this.

After this agreement was signed,

things didn't really get better.

Actually, they got much worse.

Decision-makers and industries,
leaders and politicians,

they went back to business as usual,

exploiting our livelihoods
like there is literally no tomorrow,

building coal power plants again and again

even though we know that needs to stop,

according to the Paris agreement.

So while there are also
good developments, of course,

there are installations of wind
and solar energy all over the globe, yes,

but these positive changes
are slow, too slow in fact.

So since the Paris Agreement was find,

climate graphs keep raising to the top,

smashing records every year.

The five hottest years ever recorded

were the previous five years,

and at no time have global emissions
been higher than today.

So there I was,

seeing and understanding
the science on the one side,

but not seeing answers,
not seeing the action, on the other side.

At that point, I had enough.

I wanted to go to the UN
Climate Conference myself,

that very place that was created
to bring people together

to fix the climate,

except not really, apparently.

This was last year.

I traveled to the Climate Conference

and wanted to find out what is this
really like, what is this about?

For political realists,

this might be no surprise,

but I found it hard to bear

that fossil fuel industries
and political leaders

are doing everything, everything
to prevent real change from happening.

They are not keen to set targets
that are ambitious enough

to put us on a below two-degree pathway.

After all, these are the only ones who
benefit from this climate crisis, right?

The fossil fuel industry generates profits

and political leaders, well,
they look at the next election,

at what makes them popular,

and I guess that's not asking
the inconvenient questions.

There is no intention for them
to change the game.

There is no country in the world
where either companies or political powers

are sanctioned for wrecking the climate.

With all the strangeness
and the sadness about this conference,

there was one someone who was different,

someone who seemed to be quite worried,

and that was Greta Thunberg.

I decided right there
that everything else seemed hopeless

and didn't seem to make sense,

so I joined her climate strike
right there at the conference.

It was my very first climate strike ever

and an incredibly strange setting,

just me and her sitting there
at this conference hall

surrounded by this busyness
of the suit-wearing conference crowd

who had no idea what to do with us.

And yet, this felt more powerful

than anything I had expected
in a very long time,

and it was right there that I felt it was
maybe time to start striking in Germany.

I was now certain that no one else
was going to fix this for us,

and if there was just a slightest chance
that this could make a difference,

it seemed almost foolish
not to give it a go.

(Applause)