She’s just 13 years old, but she’s “a threat.”
That’s climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor, who explained in an interview Friday morning, “My generation is going to have to live in a climate-changed world, and the fact that nothing was done in order to make sure that we don’t live in planetary catastrophe—it’s very disappointing and it’s upsetting.”
A recent New York City transplant, Villaseñor—taking inspiration from Swedish teen Greta Thunberg—has been standing in front of the United Nations every Friday for 11 weeks. She’s also co-leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike movement, which is organizing to get thousands of students to take part in a global day of climate action on March 15.
In a tweet sent following her interview with CBS News, the teenager appeared shocked that she had actually gone on national television and “told all the adults in America that they are threatened by us!”
In fact, “yes, you are a threat,” responded author and climate activist Naomi Klein, “because believing climate science means embracing deep change to a way of life that has long been equated with freedom and power (but is, in fact, a straight shot to utter powerlessness and loss of freedom).”
To those who criticize the young activists and may not believe in climate science, she said they “find it very threatening to their beliefs.”
She does, however, have the support of her parents. “If I’m not going to have a future then school won’t matter because we’re going to be running from disasters. We’re not going to have time to go to school because our house will be ruined by the latest hurricane, and they understand that this is important to my generation because we’re going to have to live in this world.”
To avert such disasters, U.S. Climate Strike is demanding that lawmakers implement the recently-introduced Green New Deal and that world leaders keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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