In this passionate call to action, -year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why, in August 2018, she walked out of school and organized a strike to raise awareness of global warming, protesting outside the Swedish parliament and grabbing the world's attention. "The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions," Thunberg says. "All we have to do is to wake up and change."
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxStockholm, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
What she says is far more important than anything thatI have ever seen on Agnostic.com
I live where global warming is happening 1-1/2 times faster than the global average. 600 miles north of me are Yukon and mainland Alaska. There climate is warming upwards by two times faster, more as you go further north. The permafrost is getting ever thinner. Ground is melting below buildings. land is sloughing into the sea. Here we watch as insects that used to be killed by -40 frosts in November survive because if those frosts ever come they happen in January. I used to experience three times every winter two or three days colder than -40. I saw -35 for two mornings last 2019 January. -34 once this January. We have had the spruce budworm, the pine bark beetle and the aspen leaf miner. These used to be killed but they are not now and our boreal forest is weakened. Now our summers are 20 or 30% dryer and our forests are open to catching fire as they are in Washington State below us. We have known for years that global warming threatens our food crops. Countries around the world are seeing mass migrations of people from farms to cities because they can no longer grow their crops. I can remember in the late seventies when almonds were as cheap as peanuts. Long gone are those days. California's food basket is gradually being eroded.
All the stupid talk about American politics is just that. Stupid. There is virtually not a single word about the sword of Damocles hanging above our head. It is now accepted that we cannot control below 1-1/2 degees so now we accept 2 degrees. This is insane as we probably if not already are on the cusp of initiating a cycle of self warming caused by arctic ocean warming melting clathrates and so releasing methane into the atmosphere. And at the same time microbial action in the tundra releasing methane and CO2. Ever heard of the Will-o-the-Wisp in the bogs of Ireland? That is methane releasing. The tundra contains at least as much carbon to release as all the carbon we have burned in our history. Get that going enough in the tundra and the world could keep warming until all the oxygen combines with released carbon and god knows (Take that agnostics!) how hot we'll be by then. Greta won't live to a hundred. Very few people will still be alive in 2103.
I've been politically warning about this since 2000. Al Gore longer. James Hanson tried really hard to convince Congress back in the 80's. Exxon may well have known about this in the seventies.
We are a supremely stupid and troublesome species and that we will wipe ourselves out is undoubtably a good thing but it is also supremely evil that we will take so many other species with us.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.You wrote I'm sorry but I do not think that there is any subject remotely as important as stopping global warming even though I shall be dead when the billions become millions.
Roger, think very carefully before you react. Atheists have no reason to concern ourselves with when the billions become millions, ...unless we are salespeople.
yvilletom
Level 8
Aug 16, 2020
0
Committed atheists are as foolish as fundamentalist zealots. We cannot know what comes after death. We can have hopes or fears but we cannot say anything with certainty. There so far appears to be no way that we can prove anything about after death. There just might be a reason for that. To dismiss god is one thing though it requires one to define what is meant by god. To dismiss the possibility of a creator of the universe is illogical. If there was or is we have absolutely no concept of such a thing or being. Did it just jump out of Zeus's head like Pallas Athene? Was there really no beginning? Will there really be no end? There is so much we really have not got a clue about.
@rogerbenham Your “Committed atheists are as....” post/reply asserts more than I can answer in less than an essay. I don’t want to write an essay.
We are stuck in a delusional reality. All of us. Even Greta Thunberg makes contributions to the very climate change she speaks against. How does she get around as she's been all about in Europe? Recently went on a world tour to spread her speech against climate change. I'm fairly certain the Starship USS Enterprise didn't beam her from place to place.
She's being used as a tool towards distraction with no organized political agenda behind her to bring a sense of real change while someone is benefiting from it. Unless her parents are so wealthy they can afford to support this empty journey in efforts to simply give a sense of satisfaction to Greta.
{What she says is far more important than anything thatI have ever seen on Agnostic.com}
(Take that agnostics!)
Attacking Agnostic.com and it's members, I'll argue, means you may have fell for the distraction. While the site itself merely only offers a place for the self describe a place to unite it has no other agenda to place blame on any aspects of our lives. Only the agenda for the self describe a place to speak out about. And then it only becomes an agenda as the members make it such to any possible social aspect.
I made the mistake when I came into this community of thinking people here would be more tuned in to my social and political views. Creating a place where we could all even possibly unite to make a real change in our world political atmosphere. Unfortunately, conditioning, perception management, tribal politics, and controlled narratives run wild here also. And Greta Thunberg doesn't combat those controlling entities either. Yet the very good few I'm honored to have found an association with here, especially in this group, that have a sincere want to bring change and speak out, seem to have just got bunched into a negative narrative within the entire community.
We can't control the tornadoes or tsunamis coming at us within the current power structure. We are only able to rebuild within the means we have available when the storms confront us. And there has been a slew of people speaking out against the established power structure for the entire history of the civilized world. For the past 5 decades, for example, there have been many restructuring their careers, whether that be through forced or self structuring, speaking out for us that have confronted the reality of our problems more directly than Greta Thunberg that deserve a real sincere acknowledgment, who get us through our rebuilding as the present power structure attempt to tear us down. She's not telling us anything others haven't been speaking out about for quite some time. Her time coming in was marvelous. Her time now though is doing what? Isn't she basically like the flying politician she speaks out against while doing her gig? Being I don't know the mechanics of her gig, I might however be inclined to think someone is making money off this continued show. I have to wonder who's behind funding it and why.
It's the same bottom line when it's all said and done. Only when the people, mainly the working class people, unite against the current power structure will we begin to start a real sense of change. Greta Thunberg, speak that! Then she joins the others speaking for us! We only have ourselves to blame because we are to submissively compliant to the power structure dominating over us. We are at the mercy of those who refuse to see the reality of the delusional reality that's been conditioned for them. They are the batteries of the Matrix.
William_Mary
Level 8
Mar 21, 2020
0
Well I knew that you and I have some great differences and this is one of them. I have been speaking out about global warming for 25 years. The most major effects are happening here and further North. You Southerners are experiencing little yet but you will soon. Greta travels by sailing boat and trains. Do you?
I'm sorry but I do not think that there is any subject remotely as important as stopping global warming even though I shall be dead when the billions become millions.
@rogerbenham while that's impossible in all cases my hats off to her then for what she can accomplish! Her North American tour provided some of those cases she had to resort to other means. I simply wish she would mount a better argument though. And 25 years puts you right at the top of my list with others who have been speaking out!
@William_Mary James Hanson was trying to persuade your lower house for possibly 10 years before me. Al Gore was talking about it long before me. I had just got 20 years of my own graphical records showing me that the temps were rising. They rose much faster in the first decade of the 2000's.