Greta Thunberg - Our House Is on Fire - Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

But now she wants to give an additional speech.

At the beginning.

Before they set off.

Svante questions if it’s a good idea.

She has only given one speech before. It was on Nytorget, outside a restaurant where some performers, several of our friends, were encouraged to ‘back Greta’ at a support concert.

Until then she’d never spoken in front of more people than fit in a classroom, and on those few occasions she had not exactly seemed at ease.

On the contrary.

But she is stubborn, and Svante calls Ivan at Greenpeace, and Ivan says that it’s complicated, there being so many competing interests ahead of the demonstration and all, but he’ll arrange it anyway.

‘Somehow.’

There are a lot of people in Rålambshovsparken. Almost 2,000 have crowded together at the Park Theatre’s stage behind the green hills up towards Västerbron. There are already twice as many as usually come to climate demonstrations. And more are on their way.

The air is mild.

The trees, streamers and banners move with the wind, and although everyone knows that this is nowhere near what is required to put the climate issue front and centre, there’s a different feeling about this protest.

It doesn’t feel the same as usual.

It feels as if something might happen.

Soon.

Perhaps it’s the mixture of people.

It’s no longer just the familiar faces. The regulars. The activists. The Greenpeace volunteers in polar-bear suits.

Here, suddenly, are all conceivable kinds of people and characters.

People who might have all sorts of jobs. Whose votes might go any which way.

‘This is my first demonstration,’ states a well-dressed man in his forties.

‘Mine too,’ a woman next to him says, with a laugh.

The host introduces Greta and she walks slowly but steadily into the middle of the amphitheatre’s gravel stage. She is accompanied by three of the girls who have gone on strike with her for the past two weeks: Edit, Mina and Morrigan.

The audience cheers.

Svante, on the other hand, is scared out of his wits. What will happen now?

Is she going to speak? Will she start crying? Is she going to run away?

He feels like an awful parent for not putting his foot down and saying ‘No’ from the start. All this is starting to feel too big and unreal.

But Greta is as calm as can be.

She takes the speech out of her pocket and looks out over the fan-shaped gallery. She lets her gaze wander over the sea of people.

Then she grasps the microphone and starts speaking.

‘Hi, my name is Greta,’ she says in Swedish. ‘I am going to speak in English now. And I want you to take out your phones and film what I’m saying. Then you can post it on your social media.’

The audience gives a surprised chuckle, and people take out their phones and get ready to film. For a few seconds almost everyone has their phones aimed at the four teenagers on the stage.

‘My name is Greta Thunberg and I am fifteen years old. And this is Mina, Morrigan and Edit, and we have school-striked for the climate for the last three weeks. Yesterday was the last day. But…’

She pauses.

‘We will go on with the school strike. Every Friday, as from now, we will sit outside the Swedish Parliament until Sweden is in line with the Paris Agreement.’

The crowd cheers.

Many people have told her that the strike must have a list of demands to submit to the politicians. A manifesto or something.

But Greta refuses to make any specific demands.

As she has explained again and again, ‘If we propose a lot of specific solutions, everyone is going to think that is enough. But it won’t be. We need system changes and a new way of thinking. What has to happen – what is written in between the lines in all the agreements and reports – is so much more radical than any manifesto could ever include. Our only chance is to turn over all that must be done to the scientists. We are children. We can only refer to what the scientists say.’

The gentle late-summer breeze plays in the treetops, high above Rålambshovsparken. The cheering dies down and Greta continues.

‘We urge all of you to do the same. Sit outside your parliament or local government, wherever you are, until your country is on a safe pathway to a below-two-degree warming target. Time is much shorter than we think. Failure means disaster.’

Greta has the microphone in her right hand and in her left the folded-up paper from which she is reading. Her voice is steady and there are no signs of nervousness. She appears to be at ease up there. She even smiles sometimes, and in the stands Svante has already calmed down.

‘The changes required are enormous and we must all contribute in every part of our everyday life. Especially us in the rich countries, where no nation is doing nearly enough. The grown-ups have failed us and since most of them, including the press and the politicians, keep ignoring the situation we must take action into our own hands. Starting today.

‘Everyone is welcome. Everyone is needed. Please join in. Thank you.’

The audience stands up. Shouting, applauding.

‘You must be very proud,’ says the woman next to Svante. She recognizes that he’s Greta’s dad.

‘Proud?’ Svante repeats. Loudly, so he can be heard above the cheers. ‘No, I’m not proud. I’m just so endlessly happy because I can see that she’s feeling good.’

The ovation doesn’t stop. Greta leans over to Edit and whispers. They nod at each other.

And Greta is smiling the most beautiful smile I have ever seen her smile.

I’m watching everything from a live stream on my phone in the hallway outside the dressing rooms at Oscarsteatern.

The tears keep coming.

The question is how we want to be remembered.

Those of us who lived during the time of the great fires.

What are we going to leave behind us?

From a sustainability perspective, we have, so far, failed on every point.

But.

We can change all that.

And we can do it very fast.

We still have a chance to put everything right, and there is nothing we as people can’t achieve, if only we want to.

Hope is literally everywhere, but that hopefulness makes demands.

Because without demands hope is hollow. Without demands hope is simply standing in the way of the major change that is required.

My hope affirms our good intentions and our shortcomings.

The way forward is not via prodding or witch hunts; it isn’t about pitting individual actions against each other.

My hopefulness demands radical action.

My hopefulness is not talking about what others should do or about what we can manage in ten years, because in ten years it may already be too late.

My hope is always right here and now, and I am convinced that the politician who chooses to advocate radical change is in for a positive surprise. If he or she is prepared to try to live as he or she advocates.

Humanity’s greatest leaders, the ones who will be remembered, have all had one thing in common – at the right moment they have chosen to put our future ahead of the present.

And if our fate now rests in the media’s hands, it could not have found itself in a better place.

The media know what responsibility rests on their shoulders. They know what editorial choices have been made and how they can be corrected. They know their reputations are at stake.

Each individual action is part of a common movement that is growing stronger and bigger every day. While waiting for the role models, the news desks and politicians, we have to do all the things we can do.