Greta Thunberg and Climate Change

By Abbey Wolf

At only sixteen years old and just after one year, Greta Thunberg has made her mark in human history.

This passionate and brilliant climate activist has been touring the world since she became renowned for striking out against government policies towards climate change. Thunberg has been actively taking a stand and has been a gigantic influence on millions of concerned youth and their supporters. The “supporters”, being parents, teachers, environmentalists, and (some) politicians. She has spoken on some of the highest platforms in the world, such as the UN Climate Action Summit and received more city keys around the world than anyone for her age.

She certainly has come a long way, since August 2018 when she first perched herself on the steps of the Swedish parliament in protest.

Currently, Greta is as active and vocal as always. She continues to pressure governments all over the world to step up their climate change policies. Although Canada did not initially favour well in Greta’s eyes (compared to other OECD countries), she concluded that we require much needed changes to rank along side the countries who initiate action to eliminate major threat to the environment. Examples of  “action” are cutting government funding of fossil fuel projects, which, unfortunately, Canada still supports. Why can’t the government invest in finding more alternatives to the fuel industries, and or help these industries transition into a better alternative? Of course no one wants to lose their jobs or have ghost towns created from closed coal mines. But everyone will benefit from cleaner air and water. Transitioning which means re-training, re-learning, and or UN learning practices and professions which we as the human race critically need to change in order NOT to become extinct and take the planet with us. 

I am happy (98% of the time in general) and confident to report that in the big picture, Canada does and will raise the bar on its progress to work for a cleaner environment. This holds true in theory and intent, despite what some studies have reported on how Canada fairs in our policies, in an article published by the Fraser Institute. Outlined are a multitude of measurements which produced a solid argument that Canada actually  favours rather well in contrast to these studies. They state that the methods the studies used were flawed.  I strongly recommend this article, they certainly did their work in research and I don’t see anyone debunking it. Yet! I would be interested to know Ms. Thunberg’s take on it and hope to get a chance to ask her one day soon. Although, Thunberg does acknowledge Canada’s efforts, it is one of the countries she urges to make “drastic changes”, which, I have to agree, we should. 

More currently, and in the event of the COVID-19 crisis, Greta’s Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate) has migrated to digital activism, called Clicktivism.

As the web overflows with information, now more than ever, climate activists have their work cut out for them in order to maintain the impact this movement has.

 It is one of my intentions is to help continue the dialogue and reiterate the importance of this movement in the blog and help contribute and keep the dialogue going.