Back in June Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement received Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2019.
“The Ambassador of Conscience Award is Amnesty International’s highest honour, celebrating people who have shown unique leadership and courage in standing up for human rights. I can think of no better recipients this year than Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future climate strike movement,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
The Ambassador of Conscience Award was founded in 2002 to celebrate individuals and groups who have furthered the cause of human rights by acting on their conscience, confronting injustice, and using their talents to inspire others. Previous recipients of the award include Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Harry Belafonte, Ai Weiwei, the Youth Groups of West and Central Africa, Angélique Kidjo, the Indigenous rights movement in Canada, Alicia Keys, and Colin Kaepernick.
The awards ceremony took place this past Monday, 16 September, in Washington, DC. The Guardian live-streamed it:
That clip runs for about an hour and three-quarters. If you just want to watch Greta’s acceptance speech, which runs less than eight minutes, it’s here:
I’ve made a transcript for those who, like me, prefer reading to listening:
Ehm, just, thank you everyone who is here, I am so honored to be in this room with so amazing people, and, uh, give yourself an applause. [applause]
This award is for all of those millions of people, young people around the world, who together make up the movement called Fridays for Future. All these fearless youth fighting for their future. A future they should be able to take for granted. But as it looks now, they cannot.
With our business as usual we are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes, taking away even the most basic living conditions from countless of people, making areas of the world uninhabitable for parts of the year. The fact that this will create huge conflicts and unspoken sufferings is far from secret, and yet the link between the climate and ecological emergency and mass migration, famine, violations of human rights, and war is still not clear to many people. The changes and the politics required to take on this crisis simply doesn’t exist today. That is why every single one of us must push from every possible angle to hold those responsible accountable and to make the people in power act and to take the measures required.
We, who together are the movement Fridays for Future, we are fighting for our lives. But not only that: we’re also fighting for our future children and grandchildren, for future generations, for every single living being on earth whose biosphere we share, whose biosphere we are stealing, whose biosphere we are ruining. We are fighting for everyone. For you. For the people living in areas in the world that are already suffering the consequences from the first stages of the climate and ecological emergency. People who breathe toxic air, who drink contaminated water, who have to flee their homes because of climate and environmental related disasters. Indigenous communities whose lands and waters are being destroyed. People whose food and water supply is being threatened by environmental related catastrophes: stronger and more frequent droughts, rainfalls, storms, or melting glaciers.
Whole nations are now literally being left in ruins or disappearing underneath rising sea levels. People are dying. And yet, so many of us keep looking away. The world has never seen a threat to humanrights of this scope. So said the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, during ...recently, during UN, UN civil rights council in Geneva, referring to the climate crisis. She said: ‘The economies of all nations, the institutional, political, social, and cultural fabric of every state, and the rights of all your people and future generations will be impacted.’ This is exactly the clarity we need now from governments and the people in power.
Right now the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases keep rising, rapidly. The destruction of natural habitats are continuing at horrendous speed despite all the beautiful words and promises from our leaders. We are still moving in the wrong direction with unimaginable pace. It may seem impossible to pull the emergency brake, and yet, that is what we have to do.
But right now I think there is an awakening going on. Even though it is slow, the pace is picking up and the debate is shifting. This is thanks to a lot of different reasons, but it is a lot because, because of countless of activists, and especially young activists. Activism works. [applause]
So what I’m telling you do do now is to act, because no one is too small to make a difference. I’m urging all of you to take part in the global climate strikes on September 20thand 27th. [applause]
And just one last thing: see you on the streets! [applause]
Addendum: Last night Greta gave a speech to Congress. It is printed in full by the Independent and is very much worth reading. Here are a few excerpts.
Nobody has the answer:
Stop pretending that you, your business idea, your political party or plan will solve everything. We must realise that we don’t have all the solutions yet. Far from it. Unless those solutions mean that we simply stop doing certain things.
Global social equity:
And please note that these figures are global and therefore do not say anything about the aspect of equity, clearly stated throughout the Paris Agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale. That means that richer countries need to do their fair share and get down to zero emissions much faster, so that people in poorer countries can heighten their standard of living, by building some of the infrastructure that we have already built. Such as roads, hospitals, schools, clean drinking water and electricity.
The importance of knowing and using the science:
Four-hundred and twenty Gt of CO2 left to emit on 1 January 2018 to have a 67 per cent chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise. Now that figure is already down to less than 360 Gt.
These numbers are very uncomfortable. But people have the right to know. And the vast majority of us have no idea these numbers even exist. In fact not even the journalists that I meet seem to know that they even exist. Not to mention the politicians. And yet they all seem so certain that their political plan will solve the entire crisis.
But how can we solve a problem that we don’t even fully understand? How can we leave out the full picture and the current best available science?