In recent days, youth of every race, gender, and nationality have been striking against climate change all over the world. Thousands showed up on the steps of the state capital in Boise, Idaho on September 20 to support the strike against climate change. Many left school and work in protest. Others were found chanting on their local streets, wanting to be heard.

Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old from Stockholm, Sweden, started the protest process. Greta, an environmental activist, began her solo protest in August 2018. Thunberg wants the use of fossil fuels to end completely and believes, in turn, that our environment will grow stronger from it. When more than 4 million had joined her on regular protests, Thunberg declared, “It proves you are never too small to make a difference.”  Soon after the climate change protest spread globally from the United Kingdom to the United States. 

In Thunberg’s address to the United Nations on September 23, she opened her speech with, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Those youth are angry and want a change, and they want it now.

**Photo credit to Idaho Statesmen**