For us, climate change is primarily a water crisis,” she said. “Our people can feel its impacts in their daily lives, each year through worsening floods, rising sea levels, and severe drought.

We all know we’re already living in a climate crisis. No one seems to doubt it after this past year … as we meet, much of Pakistan is still underwater; it needs help. Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa faces unprecedented drought. Families are facing impossible choices, choosing which child to feed and wondering whether they’ll survive. This is the human cost of climate change. And it’s growing, not lessening.

We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own. [At the] United Nations Climate Action Summit ... governments will have the responsibility of showing the political will to take drastic measures.

Third, and most important of all, justice. The climate crisis isn’t just about extreme weather. It’s about people. Real people. And the very people who have done the least to create the climate crisis are suffering the most. And while the Global South is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, it’s almost never on the front pages of the world’s newspapers.

The reality is that the climate crisis has arrived and it is here in British Columbia. Those are not one-off events. They will continue to take place. They will continue to hit British Columbia even as we do work to take on climate change and make progress on climate action. We’ve got to be ready.”

There is no more consequential challenge that we must meet in the next decade than the onrushing climate crisis. Left unchecked, it is literally an existential threat to the health of our planet and to our very survival... We are an economy in crisis but with an incredible opportunity: To not just rebuild back to where we were before, but better, stronger, more resilient and more prepared to the challenges that lie ahead... These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are actionable policies that we can get to work on right away... Nothing’s a hoax. Nothing’s a hoax about that. It’s a very serious subject. I want clean air. I want clean water. I want the cleanest air, want the cleanest water. The environment is very important to me.

We cannot afford the luxury of cynicism or even pessimism in our reaction to climate change. The situation is too serious. We must tackle it head on – and immediately.

The health of our planet is in serious jeopardy. Our home is on fire, we are experiencing unprecedented impacts of climate change, including severe droughts and ravaging field fires. Time is a luxury we do not have. We have to act decisively to reduce carbon emissions as our contribution to the preservation of our planet and people.

I’m just a teenager... My opinions on this doesn’t matter​. You should rather look at the science and whether his policies are in line with the Paris agreements and to stay below 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius, and then you can clearly see that, no, it’s not nearly enough in line with the science. That’s not me saying, that’s just black and white, looking at the facts​. I would just like you to basically just treat the climate crisis like a crisis. They have said themselves that this is an existential threat... They are just treating the climate crisis​ ​as it was a political topic, among other topics and, yeah, treat it as a crisis, that’s the No. 1 step​. So what we need now is to raise awareness and to create public opinion to treat the crisis like a crisis. Because if people are not aware of the crisis that we face, of course they wouldn’t put pressure on the elected leaders. So I would just tell him to, to tell the situation as it is... how can you expect support and pressure from voters if you are not treating the crisis like a crisis.

We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future.

the way that we create urgency on the issue of climate is when we have people all across the world in the streets — in the streets — showing up, demanding change and demanding a cessation of what is killing us. We have to send the message that some of us are going to be living on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now, and we will not take “no” for an answer. Climate must be a centerpiece of inside and outside organizing, an electoral and a popular force that cannot be ignored. This issue is one of the issues, the biggest issue of our time, and because of that, we must be too big and too radical to ignore.

Climate change is already . . . costing our nations trillions of dollars [and] we know that none of us can escape the worst that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment.

We need the stories of people in the Global South who are disproportionately affected by the climatic crisis, those on the front lines, because their stories represent the reality of what the climate crisis really is.

Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment. We face a direct existential threat.