Video Anchor and Producer: Sadhika Tiwari
Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
Camera: Shiv Kumar Maurya
This video is about Greta Thunberg – the 18-year-old climate activist – but it's not about her age or her rage. This is not against Greta at all.
In fact, the teenager, in the last couple of years, has arguably done more as a climate activist than several world leaders, who have enviable influence, power, resources, and experience.
At the age of 15, Greta protested outside her school. It was such a powerful protest that schoolchildren from across the globe followed her footsteps.
Greta said, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” as she protested for the future of the children of the world.
This is where she got it slightly wrong, however. Greta seems to have overlooked the future of children in developing countries such as India.
Her campaigns such as Fridays for Future and School Strike for Climate have gained prominence in urban Indian schools, no doubt. These are movements aimed at pressuring the governments across the countries into meeting carbon emission targets.
Greta, however, believes that these have to be met now.
What Greta often forgets is that developing nations such as India need the time they need to ensure a just transition, which is inevitably a slow process. We need the technology and trillions of dollars – neither of which we have right now. If India and other developing nations rush this process, lakhs of homes will be deprived of something as basic as electricity.
The obvious impact of this will be felt by lakhs of children, who will lose access to online schools – a reality of the pandemic-ridden world we now inhabit. The digital divide will widen, and opportunities will shrink.
It sounds like what Greta wants from developing countries is similar to what developed countries too have been unfairly pushing for.
Greta must introspect – is it fair to ask children of developing nations to give up on electricity, and in turn their right to education? Do children of developing countries not deserve equal rights to live a wholesome life that most in Greta’s part of the world are living?
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