Greta Thunberg has been campaigning to raise awareness for the climate crisis since 2018. This book gathers together a selection of her most important and influential speeches on the subject.
For those who don’t know about her message, she’s essentially doing all she can to highlight the fact that the climate crisis poses as existential threat to all human beings. Her speeches rightly calls out world leaders and business owners who are responsible for the largest contributions of carbon into our atmosphere. She draws attention to the fact that while many businesses and governments claim that they are being environmentally friendly, or taking steps to tackle the crisis, the reality is that they are doing very little indeed. She highlights that the rate of change is not nearly enough to save humanity from disaster and depends too much on future technological developments which might not even happen.
It’s bleak and depressing reading, but it is enormously important. Everyone needs to be aware of the reality of the situation and to push back against governments and businesses who are essentially lying to everybody. The fact that she is doing such a good job of getting her message out there does give me a bit of hope, but there’s so much more that needs to be done.
The only real criticism that I have of this book is that because it is a collection of speeches that Thunberg gave to different audiences, occasionally they can be a bit repetitive. Still, perhaps that helps to reinforce her message. Ultimately, I have the utmost respect for her and if the world can change the way things work to combat a pandemic, then we can and should be taking equally drastic measures to combat climate change.
Rating: 9/10
