Related teaching resource pack available on the Nosy Crow website.

When faced with climate change, the biggest threat that our planet has ever confronted, it's easy to feel as if nothing you do can really make a difference .

The forest was burning. Enormous orange flames curled around tree trunks and climbed into the canopy. The heat was intense, and smoke filled the air. A hundred volunteer fire fighters - students, teachers and holidaymakers - had come from Jokkmokk, the nearest town, to help. As Greta watched the drama unfold on her television screen, they pointed hosepipes at blazing trees and blackened stumps. Above the crackle of flames and thud of falling branches, she could hear the thrum of a helicopter overhead, as its pilot desperately dropped water bombs to douse the flames.

A month later, on 20 August, fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg sat cross-legged outside the Swedish parliament building. She was dressed in a blue hoodie, jeans and trainers and held a sign with the words 'School Strike for the Climate'. Next to her lay a purple rucksack with two schoolbooks and some homemade flyers with facts about global warming. People hurried by on their way to work, clutching briefcases and sipping from coffee cups. But if they noticed the slight girl with long brown pigtails, they didn't stop to find out more.