Not just Greta: Young people worldwide take charge on climate

When the teenage Danish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived by solar-powered boat in New York last September to speak before the United Nations General Assembly, she garnered so much attention that the world might have thought her youthful climate activism must be something unusual.

Actually it’s not, and not by a long shot.

All over the world, in big cities and small villages, in developed and still-developing countries, in global powers and tiny island nations, young people are mobilizing and marching, as seen in Friday’s global climate strike. Beyond that, young people are starting their own organizations and innovating greener everyday-living practices, all in the name of addressing climate change.

Motivated by increasingly grim scientific reports on where the planet is headed – rising temperatures, rising seas, rising drought – and by the reality that they will be inheriting the Earth, young people are taking action.

But to speak