IS THIS ALL WRONG?

“This is all wrong”, sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg denounced during the U.N. climate summit on September 23rd. The young and committed activist sailed across the ocean, travelling for two weeks on a solar-powered boat to call to action to the most powerful delegates of the United Nations. The audience, speechless, stared at her amazed and could only react with a standing ovation. Since the year 2018 she has been organizing “climate strikes”, but she has just been listened to a few months ago. What does it takes for us to listen to one of the many voices that are safeguarding the future of our generations?

In her TED talk in 2018, the speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the climate campaign at the World Economic Forum, the speech during the Global Climate Strike at New York City, Greta always insisted on asking: “How dare you?”. Her claims to understand the importance of our actions, our relation with the environment intend to denounce politicians for ignoring the climate crisis and only caring about ensuring “economic growth”. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” the wounding phrase that the young leader emotionally pronounced. “How dare you continue to look away and come here and say you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?”, she added. Multinational companies and politicians assure that today's action to revert this climate crisis situation is enough; but the youth generation will not accept this as an excuse.

Speeches and conferences are not sufficient for Greta Thunberg and fifteen more young activists who announced a lawsuit against five nations that have failed to reduce their emissions according to the Paris Agreement in which they are involved: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey. This legal action holds on the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically aiming at the right of life, health and peace. If this lawsuit succeeds in proving that these countries have known about the risks of climate change for decades but have failed to take action to curb their emissions, the nations will be asked to respond. Why five nations that all together have less gas emissions than the United States have been “pointed out” by this legal claim? Those are just five of the 195 nations that have committed to take action to solve this crisis; and President Donald Trump has recently announced the U.S. withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Therefore Greta and her team have no legal right to include the United States in this lawsuit, except Trump accepts to sign up again in the agreement. Even though the confident young activist has not been able to legally accuse the United States, the North American country is a target for Greta Thunberg. During the protests organized by her, through her speeches, by U.N. meetings, she has been taking action and demanding American politicians to do something about the Climate Crisis. Even though making this claims a legal issue will not be easy, she will not give up because she is convinced that her generation will be able to finally denounce the most powerful countries that own the guilt of the crisis we are going through.

Our country has been publicly accused for not understanding the gravity of global warming and climate issues. Argentinean activists, such as Bruno Rodriguez, have joined Greta Thunberg, the Climate Summit and UN meetings to participate in Climate Strikes. Little we know about how we, each of us, are involved and are guilty for the Global Crisis that is taking place. How can politicians can talk to us about “economic growth” in a world that has no future? How can we accept that the leaders of the world have refused to save the future generations? “People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing”, as Greta Thunberg said, but we still do not open our eyes.