I was literally struck by her short but powerful speech. Let me quote 16-year- old Greta Thunberg’s warning to world leaders (and to all of us), at the UN climate summit: “My message is: we’ll be watching you”. (the audience chuckled and clapped). “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 come to us, young people, for hope? How dare you!! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?” (more applause, no laughter this time) “How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight? You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that, because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe… You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you, and if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up, and change is coming, whether you like it or not.” I wasn’t there, but -as an adult-I can`t help feeling ashamed. Hamlet would put it this way: The rest is silence …
Published on Buenos Aires Times