This week’s icon made our jaws drop. At 16, Greta Thunberg speaks truth to power — earlier this month, she addressed a room of billionaires and world leaders in Davos with a powerful speech:

"Adults keep saying: 'We owe it to the young people to give them hope.' But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act."

Thunberg has organized students around the world to participate in School Strikes 4 Climate Action. She works tirelessly to mobilize young people for climate action, part of a global tide of environmental activists that includes groups like the Sunrise Movement in the United States.

Why We’re Inspired by Greta

Greta has used the tools of social media to not only advocate for climate action, but also hold those responsible to account. Her speeches and posts are bold and unapologetic, based on climate science, and hopeful — she has become the voice of a new generation of youth activists determined to stop the destruction of the planet.

Her last words at Davos can inspire us all to take climate action now:

"At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness.

But Homo sapiens have not yet failed.

Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognize the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance.

We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.

Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.
Either we do that or we don’t."