ENGLISH SPEECH | GRETA THUNBERG: How Dare You (English Subtitles) — Transcript

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1. 0:10Greta your first climate strike was a lonely event a little over a year ago, and in the
2. 0:16intervening time, you have sparked the interest of millions literally of children around the
3. 0:21globe demanding action for climate change.
4. 0:25What's your message to world leaders today?
5. 0:36My message is that we'll be watching you?
6. 0:48This is all wrong.
7. 0:50I shouldn't be up here.
8. 0:53I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean.
9. 0:58Yet you all come to us young people for hope.
10. 1:02How dare you!
11. 1:05You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
12. 1:10And yet I'm one of the lucky ones.
13. 1:15People are suffering.
14. 1:17People are dying.
15. 1:18Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
16. 1:22We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairy
17. 1:29tales of eternal economic growth.
18. 1:32How dare you!
19. 1:41For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear.
20. 1:47How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you're doing enough when
21. 1:54the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
22. 2:00You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency.
23. 2:05But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that.
24. 2:11Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you
25. 2:17would be evil.
26. 2:19And that I refuse to believe.
27. 2:28The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance
28. 2:35of staying below 1.5 degrees (Celsius) and the risk of setting off irreversible chain
29. 2:40reactions beyond human control.
30. 2:44Fifty percent may be acceptable to you.
31. 2:48But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden
32. 2:55by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice.
33. 2:59They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the
34. 3:07air with technologies that barely exist.
35. 3:12So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences.
36. 3:21To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best
37. 3:28odds given by the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) – the world had 420 gigatons
38. 3:33of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1, 2018.
39. 3:40Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
40. 3:45How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just "business as usual" and some technical
41. 3:51solutions?
42. 3:53With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less
43. 4:01than eight and a half years.
44. 4:06There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because
45. 4:12these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like
46. 4:18it is.
47. 4:21You are failing us.
48. 4:22But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.
49. 4:28The eyes of all future generations are upon you.
50. 4:32And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
51. 4:46We will not let you get away with this.
52. 4:49Right here, right now is where we draw the line.
53. 4:52The world is waking up.
54. 4:56And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
55. 5:00Thank you.