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Greta Thunberg: Climate Activists Are Changing How They Organize Amid a Pandemic

Greta Thunberg speaks about how the Fridays for Future school strikes movement is responding to COVID-19.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke in an Earth Day live stream hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum about how the Fridays for Future school strikes movement she launched is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. “Within the Fridays for Future movement, there’s still this sort of big sense of resistance, and people are thinking, ‘We will get out of this. And when we do, we will continue, and we will do everything we can that is possible in that situation to continue to push even harder,’” says Thunberg. “I feel like many people have not lost their sense of hope. We have just changed the way we do things. We are maybe just saving it for later at the moment.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Just before our broadcast, 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke in an Earth Day live stream hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum. She spoke about how Fridays for Future school strikes movement is responding to the pandemic.

GRETA THUNBERG: Some people feel like, “How long is this going to go on?” And there’s this kind of big uncertainty. And people are not always comfortable with that kind of uncertainty, and people want to know what will happen and how are we going to move forward. And it might be hard for many to accept that we don’t know anything, what’s going to happen. We don’t know how long this is going to go on, because we can’t predict that kind of things.

It feels like right now the world is totally different from how it was just a week ago. So we just have to adapt and see what happens and change our behavior and plan from there, from — and because that is what you — simply what you have to do in a crisis. You have to adapt to the current situation.

But still I feel like within the Fridays for Future movement, there’s still this sort of big sense of resistance, and people are thinking, “We will get out of this. And when we do, we will continue, and we will do everything we can that is possible in that situation to continue to push even harder.” And I feel like many people, they have not lost their sense of hope. We have just changed the way we do things. And we’re maybe just saving it for later at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: That was 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaking in an Earth Day live stream hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum just before our broadcast.

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