On Saturday, climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained twice by police in the Netherlands for joining other activists who were intending to block The Hague’s A12 highway, five years after she warned the European Parliament regarding climate change, “I want you to panic.”
After being detained by police, Thunberg was released, joined activists blocking a different road that led to the railway station, then was detained again and transported in a police van, Reuters reported. She was released several hours later.
“We are in a planetary emergency and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and be forced to become climate refugees when we can do something,” Thunberg stated.
“It’s important to demonstrate today because we are living in a state of planetary emergency,” Thunberg told AFP news agency, according to the BBC. “We must do everything to avoid that crisis and to save human lives.”
“While we can’t comment on individual cases, we can confirm that all of the people who were picked up by police and put on to minibuses were officially arrested, because they were blocking the highway and that is against the law,” The Hague’s local police declared.
Roughly five years ago, on April 16, 2019, Thunberg, then 16, told the European Parliament, “I want you to act as if the house is on fire. I have said those words before, and a lot of people have explained why that is a bad idea. A great number of politicians have told me that panic never leads to anything good, and I agree. To panic, unless you have to, is a terrible idea. But when your house is on fire and you want to keep your house from burning to the ground, then that does require some level of panic …”
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She warned, “Around the year 2030, ten years, 259 days, and ten hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. That is, unless, in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place … We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, and the extinction rate is up to ten thousand times faster than what is considered normal with up to 200 species becoming extinct every single day.”
She concluded, “It’s okay if you refuse to listen to me; I am, after all, just a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden. But you cannot ignore the scientists or the science or the millions of school-striking children who are school-striking for the right to a future. I beg you: please do not fail on this.”
