By Grace Morrison
With scorching temperatures, rising sea levels, the loss of animals and their habitats, and constant natural disasters, it is clear that we are in the middle of a climate crisis that threatens life as we know it. Greta Thunberg recognized this when she began to skip school every Friday in an attempt to call for action combating climate change. Thunberg began this campaign in August 2018, quickly gaining support and attention from the media. Eventually, the movement became known as Friday’s For Future (FFF), which has been very active since the successful national climate strike it organized in September 2019 that gained the world’s attention. FFF’s main form of action includes issuing petitions, striking, and demanding action from governments. Their most recent campaign is titled “No More Empty Promises.”
“No More Empty Promises” is a petition with the goal of pushing governments around the world to act against environmental destruction. In the petition, FFF demands that investments by governments in fossil fuels end immediately. “No More Empty Promises” also calls for the creation of “binding carbon budgets,” with the end goal of zero carbon emissions. In addition to the campaign, FFF’s leaders wrote a letter to the world, which can be read and signed on their website, that holds Joe Biden and 40 other heads of state accountable for mishandling the climate crisis on the government level. The rest of the letter criticizes the Summits on Climate and the lack of action taken at these meetings, and focuses on the Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA), who often pay the price of climate change. It also addresses the top polluters in the world, such as the U.S., China and the European Union, and natural disasters caused by the climate crisis.
“End the bullshit. All of this devastation and suffering has happened within the last decade; if nothing changes, we can only expect things to get worse. Today, these communities are the most vulnerable because they have been colonized, oppressed, silenced, and treated as means for your profit. You have a historical debt to the most affected people and areas and we, the people, are coming to collect our dues. If things are kept this way, by the time you develop your greener societies, MAPA will be living an unprecedented catastrophe. But don’t be fooled, sooner or later, it will be a catastrophe for you too… brace yourselves because we will not back down.”
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