Patti Smith Wrote Greta Thunberg A Poem For Her Birthday

True gift.

Text by Hayley Morgan

Over the weekend, the world’s actual hero Greta Thunberg turned 17. And what do you get someone who is our truest gift? Nothing less than a poem from Patti Smith.

Accompanying an image of the climate activist, Patti Smith included the beating words in her caption: “This is/Greta Thunberg, turning/seventeen today, asking/for no accolade, no gifts,/save we not be neutral./ The Earth knows its kind,/ just as all deities, just as/animals and the healing/spring. Happy birthday/to Greta, who stood today,/as every Friday, refusing/ to be neutral.”

In OG style, Greta spent her birthday protesting outside Swedish parliament, holding a ‘school strike for climate’ sign. According to her insta, the strike is in week 72. She also used the platform to draw much needed attention to Australia’s own climate hell — calling for political action to combat the bushfires.

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Australia is on fire. And the summer there has only just begun. 2019 was a year of record heat and record drought. Today the temperature outside Sydney was 48,9°C. 500 million (!!) animals are estimated dead because of the bushfires. Over 20 people have died and thousands of homes have burned to ground. The fires have spewed 2/3 of the nations national annual CO2 emissions, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The smoke has covered glaciers in distant New Zealand (!) making them warm and melt faster because of the albedo effect. And yet. All of this still has not resulted in any political action. Because we still fail to make the connection between the climate crisis and increased extreme weather events and nature disasters like the #AustraliaFires That has to change. And it has to change now. My thoughts are with the people of Australia and those affected by these devastating fires. (Photo: Matthew Abbott for The New York Times)

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Image: Instagram

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