Greta Thunberg’s call is reverberating in India where school kids in metros are missing classes for a climate strike
Youth leadership is certainly changing the world. And the greatest impact among activist leaders has been achieved by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden, who has taken upon herself the task of awakening the consciousness of the world community to the only issue that will matter to us — climate change. From launching a protest outside her country’s Parliament on August 2018, till a little more than a year now, the teenager has indeed caught the attention of not just the intended audience, the lawmakers across the world, but gathered traction among the youth. Her message has been plain and simple: Stop talking, start acting. And she is leading by example, taking the road and sailing the waters in solar-powered rides while strictly not flying. Now her call for “climate strikes” till the end of the month has ensured the largest student demonstration on planet earth till now. Millions of youth, predominantly school-going, are giving their classrooms a miss to take part in peaceful street protests demanding world leaders to take concrete actions and avert environmental catastrophes. Her echoes have been heard here, too, as millennials in Delhi launched a march from the city centre that snaked past Lodhi Garden and ended at the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. The students even submitted a memorandum to the powers that be. In the spirit of the freedom movement and a display of our vibrant culture, brightly dressed students held up placards that read, “The show must go on” and “if the weather can change, so can you.” Young people in other metro cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kolkata followed suit, setting aside their weekday pursuits.
Ahead of the 2019 Climate Action Summit, while speaking to the members of Congress in the House Ways and Means Committee last week, Greta said, “This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced, you cannot solve a crisis without treating it as one. Stop telling people that everything will be fine. As it looks now, everything won’t be fine.” Bluntly, she told the US lawmakers,“Listen to the scientists, unite behind the science, then take real action.” Echoing her words, even the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could not afford to remain a mute spectator and asked member nations to bring a plan and not plain speeches to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Greta’s success and freshness have been that as a disruptor, she is being heard more and as a representative of a generation we will be bequeathing the earth to, is stirring up enough guilt within us. Besides, her passionate campaigns and demonstrable actions of how to re-orient modern living in a sustainable manner have given everybody an individual goal that is easier to meet than effecting a policy change. Climate scientists had for long warned that the world is running out of time to avert the worst effects of global heating. They had alerted about the consequences — food scarcity, water stress, deaths due to high temperatures, forest fires, and mass displacements — all of which have become a reality. Youth leaders are more aware in a knowledge society, more user-oriented and practical. It’s time we go by their blueprint. For a child is indeed the father of man.
