Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. Remember someone wiser than you saying this? Like your parent, or your boss, or your best friend? I sure do, and I am grateful every day to have had someone bring this universal law to my attention years ago. In my case, it was the chair of a non-profit board who shared this life-changing insight with me.
Just how many times this saying has “come true” for me I can’t even begin to count. Sometimes what I asked for showed up in a good way, sometimes not so good. Truth be told, the manifestations of my wishes had more to do with precisely what I had asked for; it wasn’t the universe playing tricks on me. To put it another way, I have learned to ask a better question after one too many negative experiences. It has taken me years to figure this out, but I think I’ve finally got the hang of it.
Like when, a few months ago, I wrote about asking for a superhero to come along and help us with our planetary predicament of climate change. Who showed up in my awareness almost immediately was none other than 15-year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden. This teenager is making big waves on the climate change front.
Thunberg is calling for a grassroots approach to fighting climate change, having given up on our world leaders’ ability to do anything of substance about it—despite over 20 years of United Nations climate change conferences held annually since the first COP 1 in Berlin (1995).
Addressing adult climate change negotiators from around the world at the most recent COP 24 climate summit in Katowice, Poland (December 2018), Thunberg’s words packed a mighty wallop when she said, “So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not.”
Thunberg’s climate justice activism began in August 2018. Instead of going to school, she stood alone outside the Swedish parliament with a sign that read “Skolstrejk for Klimatet,” meaning “School Strike for Climate.” Other students soon joined her every Friday in urging their country’s government to treat climate change like the crisis it was.
Friday school strikes for climate, sometimes called “Fridays for Future,” are now becoming a worldwide movement. According to Thunberg, “There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.” As a banner carried at a school strike in Germany pointed out, “Why learn without a future?” In case you were wondering, school strikes for climate have been taking place in Canada, too.
Last October (2018), world scientists warned that we have a mere 12 years to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to keep global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Our best bet is to do all within our power to reach this target; to fail at doing so means facing dire human, economic, and environmental consequences.
A few slips on my keyboard keeps spelling Thunberg’s first name as Great instead of Greta. I think it’s appropriate. Because The Great Greta Thunberg is my superhero, the one I had asked for so many months ago. Climate justice, so that we stop stealing our kids’ futures—now that’s in our best interest.
For more in your best interest, follow Sheelagh @sheesays or visit www.ideagarden.net
