As Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg graduates from school and staged her last strike, she vowed to keep “fighting against climate change”.
Thunberg is a student climate activist who came to the spotlight in 2018 when she commenced a global youth drive of school strikes demanding action on climate preservation.
The 20-year-old wrote on a Twitter thread: “Today, I graduate from school, which means I’ll no longer be able to school strike for the climate.”
“Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go.”
Swedish activist’s school walk-outs, which occurred Fridays, caused the creation of the Friday’s for Future campaign, which organised a global strike. In the strike, millions of people in over 150 countries followed her and walked out of classes to demand climate change action back in 2019.
Since then, she became the epitome of action on climate change, visiting different places around the world to meet global leaders, and spreading her message. She preferred to travel sustainably by boat or train.
“We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalised and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth,” Thunberg noted.
“There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis.”
Thunberg said even though she would no longer be able to strike from school each Friday, she would continue to work to get global leaders to address climate change.
“We who can speak up have a duty to do so. In order to change everything, we need everyone. I’ll continue to protest on Fridays, even though it’s not technically ‘school striking.’ We simply have no other option than to do everything we possibly can. The fight has only just begun.”
Thunberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019. She was also criticised by then-US president Donald Trump and former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison.
Earlier this year, Thunberg was also arrested alongside other campaigners during a protest against the demolition of a small German village to make way for a coal mine.
Thunberg castigated the world leaders for their inaction on climate change at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January 2019 saying “our house is on fire”.
