Greta Thunberg says she doesn’t need your awards. In a powerful Instagram post on Tuesday, the 16-year-old climate activist, who was granted the Nordic Council’s 2019 environmental award, explained why she declined to accept the prize. The council awarded Thunberg a sum of 500,000 Swedish krona (roughly $51,000) as a tribute to her work.
Instead, she blasted the Nordic Council for the ironic and hypocritical nature of the award. In her post, Thunberg recited facts about the Nordic region’s huge ecological footprint and lack of constructive change with regards to dramatic environmental degradation. “The climate movement does not need any more awards. What we need is for our politicians and the people in power to start to listen to the current, best available science,” Thunberg wrote in her post. “In Sweden we live as if we had about 4 planets.”
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According to the Global Footprint Network (as cited in Thunberg’s post), Sweden alone produces one of the worst global consumption footprints. Thunberg, a native of Sweden, then addressed Nordic plans to continue production of oil and gas, and explained how those efforts go against anything the environmental award might represent. Finally, she cited the Paris Agreement, which is signed by all Nordic countries, demanding that people in a position to act as leaders for climate change should actively do so.
"Until you start to act in accordance with what the science says is needed to limit the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees Celsius, I — and Fridays for Future in Sweden — choose not to accept the Nordic Council's environmental award," she wrote.
This sentiment comes just weeks after Thunberg boldly declared at the United Nations Climate Action Summit that “we will not let you get away with this.” Thunberg’s fight for climate change has emboldened young people around the world in her Fridays for Future weekly march. Since August 2018, she’s congregated international youth in a series of school walk-outs to protest climate change, hoping to enact real and meaningful policy shifts across the globe.
“Right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not,” Thunberg exclaimed to the U.N.
The Fridays for Future climate justice protests now span 215 countries, over 6,000 cities, and 8.6 million protestors around the world. In December she will make her way to Chile for the U.N. climate conference, reciting yet again why it’s so crucial to protect our planet.