In the summer of 2018, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg started skipping school, spending her Fridays outside the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, holding a sign which read “School Strike For Climate.” Her effort quickly gained traction, expanding beyond her home country to the entire world. How I found out about her was through a TED Talk she had given in January 2019, and her story moved me. She was struck with depression, the tale went, after learning about the devastating effects of climate change and the negligence which the planet’s most powerful people had been granting them. So, she decided to try to make her mark on the world, and as it seemed, I was far from the only one who was inspired by her…

During the time that I wasn’t busy getting distracted by The Hoot’s Opinions editor’s luscious chestnut hair and iridescent, verdant eyes during one of our production nights, I heard word of his new column in partnership with Year of Climate Action (YOCA). Gripped by my need to write about something, I volunteered to contribute to its first edition. 

No shade intended toward the many talented writers who will be contributing in the future, but you see, I’m sure that over the course of its lifetime, you will see a lot of things in the YOCA column that’ll just make you feel like shit. Be it angry, sad, powerless or anything else that can be abbreviated into one of the English language’s most useful four-letter word. Because, let’s face it—there is rarely ever good news in the topic of climate and the environment. So I think it may be useful to start this thing off on a rather optimistic note. I know this may not seem like the time and place for positivity, but just hear me out, and let me tell you about my experience with climate activism.

…Eventually, in the early stages of the spring of 2019, the Thunberg wave had settled in my home city of Paris, France, and my fellow high school students had been talking about skipping school on an approaching Friday afternoon to join a planned “School Strike For Climate” protest. Motivated by Thunberg’s activism, my own knowledge of the climate crisis and an opportunity to hang out with friends instead of being at school, I decided I’d get out there and protest. A few friends and I made a protest sign the night before, a crudely painted planet Earth with the words “There is no Planet B” captioning it. Due to pure accident, the blue and green paint we’d used started dripping down the sign. We were concerned for a second, but we realized that this created a cool teardrop—or bleeding—effect which did nothing but emphasize our point. 

So, the next day, sign in hand, I left school after lunch alongside a group of 20 or 30 people, and we headed toward the location where the protest was starting. When we got there, the crowd had already mostly formed. It was kind of awkward. Different groups of teenagers talking among themselves, kids messing around on their morally justified day of playing hooky. Once we started moving, however, the atmosphere changed. We were led by those who really cared about the protest, starting chants that everyone soon joined. All of a sudden, I was taken by the shared connection everyone had. No matter how initially invested everyone was, it became clear that we were all here for the same goal. I started interacting with my fellow protesters, sailing through the sea of humans to find people of different backgrounds and walks of life all here for the same thing: to make the world better. It was electrifying. I wanted to personally take the decaying world the generations before us had disdainfully left us with on the way out and to restore it to health. In a word, it gave me hope for the future.

In the end, I think that’s kind of the point of it all. We take action to inspire hope which in turn inspires more action. In 2022, Greta Thunberg isn’t as much of a household name as she was in 2019. But that doesn’t really matter. She was never wrong. Her message still stands. She did a lot of good, and surely will continue to do so, but there is even more to be done by we who carry on her mission. If you’re reading this and you’re not my parents, chances are you’re a college student. And I know that growing into adulthood in this world that our forefathers left us is scary. You fear for the future—at least I know I do. Sometimes you wonder, will there even be a future? And if not, what’s the point of doing anything about it? “Screw you, grandpa, you messed up the world anyway and we’ll all be extinct in a hundred years so why the hell do I need to recycle?” But we can’t give in to these existential thoughts and despair. As activists, as the youth, as the future, we need to have hope. We need to know that we do what we do, no matter how small or large in scale, because we want the world to become a better place. Because we know the world will be a better place. 

I’m not telling you to ignore the bad stuff. That’s a futile effort—you’ll see it everywhere: on social media, in the news, maybe in this very column. In fact, I’m telling you to listen to it closely. But don’t let it wear you down. Like Greta Thunberg, take those shitty feelings and turn them into action. Turn them into a hope that our kids or our grandkids or maybe our great-grandkids aren’t going to need to see it. People have been engaging in climate activism for decades, but here, at the tipping point, its true legacy begins with us. And deep in my heart, I know that we can change the world.