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Climate action – no time to lose In 2018, after a series of heatwaves and wildfires in Sweden, 15 year-old Greta Thunberg decided to skip school every Friday and sit outside the Swedish Parliament building with a sign saying “school strike for the climate”. She said Sweden should respect the Paris Agreement of 2015. When she posted her protest on social media, it went viral and hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the world followed the example of her “Fridays for Future”. Young people are right to worry about pollution and greenhouse gases. If governments don’t act now, future generations will suffer. We already have melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme temperatures and there will also be more frequent natural disasters, like droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes. Since 1880, the Earth’s average temperature has gone up by nearly 1 degree Celsius and most of the change has happened since 1975. This global warming comes mainly from the increase in carbon emissions from fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – that we use to produce energy. But another cause is deforestation to create farms and cities. This is destroying the plants that turn CO2 into oxygen. Every second, we are losing an area of forest as big as 27 football fields. If this doesn’t stop, in 100 years’ time the rainforests will disappear completely. Like Greta, we can make a difference. Our actions are as important as those of our governments. We can reduce waste, recycle and travel responsibly. If you travel by train instead of flying, you reduce your carbon footprint enormously. Greta Thunberg’s family have an electric car, but they usually cycle everywhere. And when Greta tours Europe to speak about climate change, she travels by train, not by plane. Time is running out. The goal of the Paris Agreement was to limit global warming to 2° Celsius, but now scientists are less optimistic than before. They say the goal has to be below 1.5°. The 20 warmest years in history have been in the last 22 years. If this trend continues, the results will be catastrophic for our planet.