"My message is that we'll be watching you."
The first eight words of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg's speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit are met with laughter. Stone-faced and unamused, she continues on:
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!"
Every word is infused with earnest, anger, and betrayal - and justifiably so. The science has been clear for over 30 years now: if we don't severely cut our carbon emissions by well over half, we will see a temperature rise that will set off environmental destruction beyond human control. The repercussions of this will be felt not by our current world leaders with the resources to take action, but by the younger generations who are terrified by their apathy.
Between protesting outside of the Swedish Parliament building and traveling across the Atlantic in a zero-emissions boat to meet with politicians and world leaders, Greta Thunberg's name has become synonymous with climate change activism. While there is much to be said against the vile attacks toward her coming from the right side of the political aisle, I would like to focus on the complacency and insincerity from those who are supposedly on her side.
At a Capitol Hill meeting with youth climate activists last week, Thunberg was told by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, "We need your leadership. Young people are the army." This type of sentiment, however genuine, needs to be shut down. Policymakers and world leaders have no right to turn to sixteen-year-olds for leadership. Especially considering that the hope these adults claim to feel from youth activists is rooted in the knowledge that they will no longer be around when these teens are forced to reconcile with the effects of climate change.
Greta Thunberg did not spend 15 days sailing across the Atlantic to be told empty platitudes by the very people who have the power to take action. For every "yas queen, girl power!" tweeted by seemingly well-intentioned adults, there are a dozen more failures on their part to adequately address the climate crisis. However brave and articulate, the fact that these youth activists even have to exist proves that there is a steep disconnect between politicians and those whom they have been entrusted to lead.
If your reaction to Greta Thunberg's tearful and impassioned speech is to rest on your laurels and sigh that "the kids are alright," then you have fundamentally misunderstood her message. She is sixteen years old. She should be in high school. Instead, she is begging adults to leave behind a planet in which her and her peers can hope to survive.
