Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old Swedish climate change activist, known for being the first person to start a schools strike for climate outside of the Swedish parliament building. Greta’s school strike against climate change has spread to 71 different countries, creating what could be one of the largest global climate change protests ever, nominating her for a Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to one person who has “done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” once a year, and for a 16 year old to be nominated for her actions shows that anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize if they put in the effort for it. Greta represents the youth of the generation who will be living through the environmental consequences caused by those who won’t be living through them. What Greta is doing is really effective in terms of creating a long lasting action on sustainability as it aims to change the mindset that people have when it comes to the environment. Not everyone understands the consequences of their actions. This is quite similar to my Critical Challenge Project in which we aimed to change the mindsets of people because we understood that by simply putting a ban on certain actions, it would only limit the areas in which they could commit to those actions. For example, if we were to put a ban on ordering food on campus due to the plastic consumption, students would still order food outside of where it effects them, such as in their homes or in other locations. Creating a lasting action involves changing the way people think, and making them be aware of their actions. I think what Greta has done is important because it shows that any student can make a change as big as what Greta has. An example of her doing this is during her TEDx talk in which she talked about the urgency of the situation and how people should be panicking because of how bad the situation is getting. She also made adults who have the power to make direct changes be able to empathise with the youth, explaining how that although the problem may not affect themselves in the future, it will affect the youth, their children and their grandchildren. During the Critical Challenge Project itself, my group faced many challenges and obstacles. The main challenge that our group faced was trying to find a solution that would work within the time frame of the project. As the time span of the project is only a few weeks, there isn’t enough time to dedicate to large solution, but in the case of Greta and many others, there isn’t any time restrictions other than the point of no return, when the environment gets so bad that we can no longer fix it. We weren’t able to dedicate to three of our initial ideas. For example, we had initially attempted to increase the amount of plastic recycling on campus, but after a meeting with Nathan Hunt, the head of sustainability on campus, we realised that the amount of time and manpower required to carry out a project like this would have been too difficult. We also realised that the financial costs of a project like this for both the school and any recycling services would be too great to make it worth it. We overcome these challenges by being resilient and restarting from the beginning to come up with a different idea. The biggest weakness of the group was not respecting the complexity of the issue, as this is what caused us to come up with solutions that we would later realise would not be feasible due to factors that we could have been aware of, though in the long run it would not matter in terms of creating a long lasting solution because the more you make mistakes with solutions the better your solutions will be. What’s important to learn about this situation is that you don’t need to be wealthy, you don’t need to be smart, and you don’t need to be supported by family members or friends. All that matters is that you understand the problem and you have a proposed idea on how to resolve the issue, whether it be raising awareness or protesting. Everyone all around the world, if they are determined enough and are willing to put effort can make a change in the world.
