 | By Indrani Sen Culture Editor, Opinion |
"You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?" the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg asked world leaders at the United Nations in 2019, in an eloquent speech berating them for failing to curb climate change. "For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away?" |
Three years after Thunberg started her lone strike outside the Swedish Parliament, she and other young climate activists from around the world are still asking that question, this time following a year of devastating flooding, wildfires and heat waves, as well as a report this month from leading climate scientists affirming that global warming is definitely happening and will only get worse. |
"We are the ones who will have to clean up the mess you adults have made, and we are the ones who are more likely to suffer now," wrote Thunberg in a guest essay Thursday, co-authored with three other young climate activists: Adriana Calderón of Mexico, Farzana Faruk Jhumu of Bangladesh and Eric Njuguna of Kenya. |
The four also wrote the foreword to a new UNICEF report, released today. The Children's Climate Risk Index breaks down globally the effects of climate change on children, ranking countries based on children's exposure to excessive heat, cyclones, air pollution, flooding, water scarcity and other environmental hazards. Almost every child on earth is exposed to at least one climate or environmental hazard, according to the report, and 850 million — about a third of all the world's children — are exposed to at least four. |
The report also assesses by country children's vulnerability to those dangers. Heartbreakingly, children are by and large much more vulnerable than adults to the brutality of climate change's effects. That's because of their "anatomic, cognitive, immunologic and psychologic differences," according to a study from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. And among the world's children, as Thunberg and her co-authors point out in their essay, the inequalities are disturbingly stark: |
Thirty-three countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria and Guinea, are considered extremely high-risk for children, but those countries collectively emit just 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The 10 countries with the highest emissions, including China, the United States, Russia and Japan, collectively account for nearly 70 percent of global emissions. And children in those higher-emitting states face lower risks: Only one of these countries, India, is ranked as extremely high-risk in the UNICEF report. |
That the poorest children in the poorest countries suffer the most because of the unwillingness of those of us in rich countries to change our behavior is not surprising to any adult who has been paying attention. But it should be nothing less than shocking and appalling. And it should spur us — governments, companies and individuals — to immediate action. |
Sometimes we need children to point out the unfairness that is in plain sight. Thunberg and her fellow youth activists are performing that vital service now. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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