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
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Civics
D2.Civ.1.6-8 Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of citizens, political parties, interest groups, and the media in a variety of governmental and nongovernmental contexts.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
