At the 2022 launch of her book, aptly titled “The Climate Book” the then 19-year-old activist had some words for the entire system we live under today:
“We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order. If economic growth is our only priority, then what we are experiencing now should be exactly what we should be expecting.”
That was two years ago, and it’s no surprise she hasn’t been given the spotlight nearly as often since. In fact, in the wake of that book launch she’s been the subject of countless hit pieces, and her Palestine solidairty activism has been denegrated as well. Greta went from a cute kid saying that climate change is bad to a young adult rightly charging global systems with not only fueling the climate crisis but also being oppressive and grossly harmful to life in numerous other ways. And, perhaps most importantly, she sees these systems as interconnected and knows that radical change is necessary for the future of life on this planet.