U6L9: Document D (Summarize the important parts of what the speaker is saying)
Source: Excerpt from the transcript of Greta Thunberg’s speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New
York City, 2019.
My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in
school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You
have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People
are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass
extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For
more than 30 years, the science has been clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying
that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight...The popular
idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees
Celsius, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control...You are failing us. But
the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you.
And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. 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. Thank you.