On Friday, climate activist Greta Thunberg graduated from high school and marked her final school climate protest, ending a chapter of advocacy that inspired youth around the world.
Thunberg held her first school strike in August 2018 outside the Swedish parliament. The movement quickly caught traction, inspiring global school walkouts in protest of world leaders' inaction on climate change.
Thunberg announced Friday that her 251st school strike would be her last, reflecting on how far the movement has come in the past five years.
\u201cSchool strike week 251. Today, I graduate from school, which means I\u2019ll no longer be able to school strike for the climate. This is then the last school strike for me, so I guess I have to write something on this day.\nThread\ud83e\uddf5\u201d— Greta Thunberg (@Greta Thunberg) 1686300230
"When I started striking in 2018 I could never have expected that it would lead to anything. After striking every day for three weeks, we were a small group of children who decided to continue doing this every Friday," she wrote on Twitter. "Some more people joined, and quite suddenly this was a global movement growing every day."
Though she has finished her primary education, Thunberg said that she still plans to hold climate protests every Friday, "even though it’s not technically 'school striking'."
"We’re still here, and we aren’t planning on going anywhere," she continued. "Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go. We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth."
Thunberg said that "the fight has only just begun," as world leaders have continued to allow the fossil fuel industry to "destabilize the biosphere and our life supporting systems."
"We’re rapidly approaching potential nonlinear ecological and climatic tipping points beyond our control. And in so many parts of the world, we are even speeding up the process," she wrote. "There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis."
