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A Year to Change the World

Travel with the world’s best-known climate activist as she takes her fight to a global stage. With unique access, the series follows Greta over an extraordinary year as she embarks on a mission to ensure world leaders work to limit global warming.

  • Fred Vigeant
Greta Thunberg beside the Bełchatów coal power station in Poland. The largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the European Union.

 Courtesy of Jon Sayers copyright of BBC Studios

Greta Thunberg beside the Bełchatów coal power station in Poland. The largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the European Union.

Watch all three episodes of A Year to Change the World Thursday, April 22 beginning at 8pm on WITF. You can stream WITF TV live on our website and through the PBS Video app on Roku, Apple TV and iPhone and Android smartphones. The program is also available on-demand through the PBS Video app.

 

Greta Thunberg is on a mission to save the world. She is asking every one of us to act and to mobilize in order to slow down the growing climate change that is destroying our planet and threatens our way of life. The message is clear, and scientists agree—we need to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees in order to give our species the best possible chance of avoiding a catastrophic future.

This revealing series follows Greta as she steps from behind the podium and onto the front lines. Over the course of the three episodes, Greta explores the science as she travels to extraordinary locations across the globe, meeting leading climate scientists, witnessing first hand the consequences of climate change and confronting the complexity of what is required to make change happen. She travels from the burning tar sands of the Canadian oil industry to the coal mines of Europe and the melting glaciers of the U.S.—places where the impact of a changing climate is glaringly obvious, both for the planet and for the inevitable human costs—making clear the reasons why scientists call for action to be taken. The series also hears from a range of academics, economists and experts, further exploring the climate change science Greta encounters on the ground.

In the fall of 2019, then-16-year-old Greta took a year off from school to embark on an international mission to spread her message: that we must act to drastically reduce our carbon emissions—immediately. The world was transfixed as this teenager spoke with directness and clarity to power, from diplomats at the United Nations to the world’s economic elite at Davos. However, just as her journey was gaining serious momentum, a new threat emerged, and everything became uncertain.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a terrifying standstill when the global economy, modern society and Greta’s journey all came to a halt. However, as days turned to months and people around the world were confined to their homes, an unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the ongoing global shutdown, revealing how much we can lessen our impact on the planet if we radically change our behavior.

Watch A Year to Change the World Thursday, April 22 beginning at 8pm on WITF. All three episodes will broadcast on April 22 back to back. Then episodes will repeat Wednesdays at 8:00pm beginning April 28 on WITF.

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