Public Comment

Let us hope that 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg’s impassioned address at the United Nations will finally pierce through the collective apathy of world leaders and serve as a catalyst for change. I applaud her courage and dedication to her noble cause that we should all embrace and emulate. This living dynamo should stir the conscious of the world.

Young people from all over the world, brimming with idealism, have offered us a moral compass and amplified the need for world governments to take action on reducing greenhouse gases which are an existential threat to all life as we know it. “Greta warned that people are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing”. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.”

We need a major shift from not-in-my-backyard phenomenon into a not-in-my-lifetime. Let's bid farewell to Greta as she heads back to school to Sweden and assure her that her visit has not been in vain. Her high energy and dynamism has already stirred many of us to action. We will prod and cajole our lawmakers to break the impasse and take action. We will shame our climate deniers and fossil fuel merchants and demand they put the survival of the planet head of short term profits.

Let us pledge that our new planet arrivals can fill their tiny lungs with pure fresh air untainted with greenhouse gases. Greta, we solute you!