*** DISCLAIMER: Please be aware that the opinions in this piece do not reflect the official stance and views of Her Campus, Her Campus Oklahoma nor The University of Oklahoma.***
Image via Poynter
The first thing I saw about Greta Thunberg was a video of her speech aimed at the U.N. on Cara Delevigne’s instagram. In this speech, she is very passionate and convincing which caught my eye because she appeared to be pretty young. I was intrigued and did some research on her.
Greta Thunberg is a sixteen year old girl from Sweden who is an activist for environmental change due to global warming. She urges people to step forward to help with the climate changes we are struggling with. She has been on Ted Talk and been to multiple conferences in the last year. She is diagnosed with Aspergers and calls it “her superpower,” according to an article on Forbes.
In her speech for the United Nations, as mentioned earlier, she urges not only her generation but older generations to help with the crisis we are facing. She discusses how they expect younger generations to step forward and make life-altering discoveries and changes that will affect humankind forever, but we can’t be expected to do so when our planet is dying and is on a short timeline. We are being left with expectations and a dying planet without any hope.
Image via BBC
For an effective plan to take place,the government needs to be involved because it is nearly impossible to simply encourage people to make major changes in their daily lives to save the planet.
While I have seen encouraging posts about Thunberg from celebrities and news outlets, I have also seen people of older generations bashing her. Thunberg set up a school strike last year to raise awareness of this pressing issue and is currently out of school in order to be on Ted Talk and other outlets to raise awareness. But, in her facebook post, she defends herself against the haters accusing her strike as a conspiracy theory among other things.
Thunberg is a young woman striving to change the world for her future and others. She isn’t a leader of the future, but is rather a leader of today. She may get chastised for being young because people believe she should be in school instead, or for being different in the sense of having Aspergers. But, neither one of these things are strong enough points to not believe in what she is fighting for.
The fact of the matter is, Thunberg is a strong young woman who isn’t afraid to start a conversation that people aren’t ready to have. She is smart enough to back up her speeches with scientists and to defend herself and the youth of the world. She is starting a world-wide conversation that was hard to start. She is breaking the mold. The youth is seeing the crisis we are facing and how important and, as Thunberg says, “Change is coming, whether you like it or not.”