Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the United Nations General Assembly at the Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday, accusing world leaders of failing to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, asking with visible fury, "How dare you?".
Thunberg, who has led a global movement that saw millions of students from across the world take off from school to go on strike for action on climate change, told the audience that “we’ll be watching you”—eliciting laughs from the crowd.
Thunberg said, “This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean.” She added, "You come to us young people for hope. How dare you?"
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, 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 the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
“How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you here 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."
Thunberg added that the popular idea of cutting emissions in half in ten years would only give the world a 50 per cent change of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.”
“50 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 technology that barely existsts” adding that a 50 per cent risk was not acceptable.
“There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today...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 your future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.”
She ended her speech, saying, “The world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.”