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“My name is Greta Thunberg, I am 16 years old, I come from Sweden, and I want you to panic. I want you to act as if the house was on fire.”

That’s how the young climate activist began her address to members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Tuesday.

In a 13-minute speech that equated civilization to “a castle built on sand” and was punctuated by applause from the chamber, Thunberg admonished the MEPs for inaction on the climate crisis and begged them to “wake up” and “unite behind the science.”

Fighting back tears, Thunberg said that “we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction and the extinction rate is up to 10,000 times faster than what is considered normal with up to 200 species becoming extinct every day.”

She also outlined “symptoms of ecological breakdown.”

“Erosion of fertile top soil, deforestation of our great forests, toxic air pollution, loss of insects and wildlife, the acidification of our oceans—these are all disastrous trends being accelerated by a way of life that we.. see as our right to carry on,” said Thunberg.

“Our house is falling apart, and our leaders need to start acting accordingly—because at the moment they are not,” she said.

If leaders realized the gravity of the crisis, said Thunberg,