Thunberg Accuses World Leaders of Not Sufficiently Loving Their Children
Climate change activist Greta Thunberg gave leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a dose of scorn and suggested leaders should care about their children for a change.
Thunberg spoke at a breakout session hosted by The New York Times and presented a three-point demand that world leaders immediately stop all investments in seeking or extracting fossil fuels, stop subsidies to fossil fuels and totally divest from fossil fuels.
“So either you do this or you’re going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5-degree target,” she said, referring to a target of trying to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. “Giving up without even trying.
“Well, I’m here to tell you that, unlike you, my generation will not give up without a fight. The facts are clear, but they’re still too uncomfortable for you to address. You just leave it because you think it’s too depressing and people will give up. But people will not give up. You are the ones who are giving up. …
“I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing a climate chaos that you knowingly brought upon them? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?
“Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. And we are telling you to act as if you loved your children above all else.”
Thunberg scolded leaders for not obeying her.
“One year ago, I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire,” she said. “I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I can assure you it doesn’t lead to anything.
“And, for the record, when we children tell you to panic, we’re not telling you to go on like before.”
Not everyone shared her views.
“We have to be a little bit between optimism and outrage,” Oliver Bäte, the chief executive of the German insurance giant Allianz, told The New York Times. “I cannot get up every day outraged. We have to do something.”
President Donald Trump, who in his speech at Davos on Tuesday lampooned “prophets of doom,” was asked about Thunberg.
“I would have loved to have seen her speak,” he said. “I did not. … I think that some people are — they put it in a level that is unrealistic to a point you can’t live your lives. We want to have the cleanest water on Earth, we want to have the cleanest air on Earth.
“Our numbers, as you saw, we had record numbers come out very recently, our numbers are very very good, our environmental numbers, our water numbers, our numbers on air are tremendous. We have to do something about other continents. We have to do something about other countries.
“When we are clean and beautiful and everything’s good but you have another continent where the fumes are rising at levels that you can’t believe, I think Greta ought to focus on those places.
“But we are doing better right now than we’ve ever done in terms of cleanliness, in terms of numbers. We have a beautiful ocean called the Pacific Ocean where thousands and thousands of tons of garbage flows toward us, and that’s put there by other countries, so I think Greta has to start working on those other countries.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
