This speech from Greta Thunberg to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019 is extremely powerful and is made even more impactful by the fact that she was only 16 years old when she gave this speech.
Thunberg discusses the remaining carbon budget to avoid dangerous environmental consequences and focuses the responsibility to act on older generations currently in positions of power.
Thunberg highlights that the UN plan only provides a 50 percent chance of avoiding catastrophic ecological conditions and that tipping points and feedback loops may reduce that chance even further.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Greta Thunberg's speech is clear and easy to understand.
This passionate speech instills a sense of urgency to take action.
Additional Prerequisites
There may be an ad before the video.
Students should be familiar with what 1.5 degrees Celsius means in regards to climate change.
Differentiation
This would be a great video to show in a social studies or history class when talking about activism.
Students could compare the tone and emotion Greta uses in her speech to other speeches given on the same day at the UN Climate Summit.
Writing or language arts classes could have students make their own speeches about climate change or another topic they are passionate about after watching this video.
This resource is the 4-minute speech that Greta Thunberg gave to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2019. Everything Greta says about the dangers of climate change and the changes we are seeing across the globe are all accurate. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
English Language Arts
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
7.SL.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
Science
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
6.ESS3.5 Ask clarifying questions based on evidence about the factors that have caused climate change over the past century.
Social Sciences
Social Science Analysis (K-12)
HS.75 Evaluate options for individual and collective actions to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
