Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders at the U.N. Climate Action Summit after an eventful few weeks that included completing a two-week transatlantic journey aboard a zero-emissions yacht and attending the Global Climate Strike on Friday. “How dare you!” she demanded in an impassioned speech delivered on Monday. Fighting back tears, she said, “For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying you are doing enough when the politics and solutions are still nowhere in sight.”
Greta was just one of many youth activists from all over the globe attending the U.N. Climate Action Summit, including fellow activists from countries such as the Marshall Islands, Argentina, and Brazil. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence also made a brief appearance but left after just 14 minutes. As Trump walked past her, the 16-year-old crossed her arms and glared at him to express her displeasure and contempt (pictured right).
Despite the somber speeches delivered by the teenage climate activists, few new climate control measures were passed at the summit.
The following is a transcript of Greta‘s speech in full:
“My message is that we’ll be watching you.
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams, and my childhood, with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones.
People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight? You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50 per cent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees (Celsius) and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
Fifty per cent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.
So a 50 per cent risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences. To have a 67 per cent chance of staying below a 1.5 degree global temperature rise — the best odds given by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) — the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on January 1, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just “business as usual” and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years.
There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not. Thank you.”
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