Climate Strike Speech

Hello, everyone. When I was writing the speech and scheduling the climate strike earlier this week, I honestly could not decide what to write about, or really, what should be the theme of today. I was struggling between topics like air pollution, single-use plastics, ecosystem destruction, etc. Until I realized a common theme among all of those: empty promises. We are told that certain countries will be carbon neutral by 2050, or plastic will be eliminated from some companies by 2030. We have all heard the different promises and pledges about what a more sustainable future looks like, but if those promises were enough, all of us would not be here today at a climate strike, because we could just sit back, relax, and enjoy the planet because we know that it will be livable for the next generation. Unfortunately, we can’t, and as you can tell, the next generation is speaking up. And, I do not mean to say that these pledges and these promises have no merit, they do, but we need them sooner, and we need government officials to stick to them. We don’t have until 2050 to switch to clean, renewable, energy. We don’t have until a decade, or two, or three to get this crisis under control, we need to do it now. I sincerely hope that all of you feel the same way because frankly, all of us being here is confusing on some level to me. I keep wondering why we as civilians and not government officials are the ones showing our leaders how to make and keep promises and showing them that the future extends beyond the next election cycle. Now, I know that we are not spending our days making and enforcing laws, but there is something that we can do. Every day, our actions make a difference. Even if it is a few people or 10,000, we are showing up, not just for ourselves, but for the next generation, as that is a promise that I am happy to keep.