Greta Thunberg’s messages at the United Nations emergency meeting on climate change in New York are riveting. Her words, delivered with a blend of emotion, fear and anger, reflect the anxiety young people around the globe feel about what will be a climate-constrained future.
Greta Thunberg has emerged as the leader of a global youth movement deploring government inaction on climate change—the world’s greatest existential threat. Her scathing remarks were applauded by the very audience largely responsible for decades of procrastination on the climate. Such Hypocrisy!
Please listen to this compelling video. The full transcript follows.
You are failing us…You have stolen my dreams and my childhood
Published on Sep 23, 2019
United Nations Climate Summit
Standard YouTube Licence
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 fairy tales 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% chance of staying below 1.5ºC, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
Fifty percent 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% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.
To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5ºC global temperature rise—the best odds given by the [IPCC]—the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on January 1st, 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 8 1/2 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.
#HowDareYou
Sorry This Is Inconvenient For You Greta Thunberg Tells Adults
Greta On Climate: Is My Microphone On, Can You Hear Me?
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Thanks for your tireless work to combat the CLIMATE CRISIS, Rolly!
John – Millions of us are working on the climate crisis. The hours are endless and the work is mostly unappreciated by the public but I cannot not do this.
Thanks for the support. That is so important.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-letter-to-un-scientists-say-there-is-no-climate-emergency_3093580.html?fbclid=IwAR3fSVtRaVWCzKsykxSf8fUMk-zLjsBSLM2x2522J-R53Fj7fpmPdlAmEqI
I don’t buy it. Over 97% of climatologists and scientists cannot be ignored. Sure you can find the odd scientist, likely financed by the oil lobby, who will offer a counter opinion, but these types must be left on the shelf to gather dust. History will judge deniers.
Thank you for your feedback and welcome to Below2C
Manufactured crisis for wealth transfer. Not one of the scientist who are a part of the 97% really know what is going to happen. Climate science is in it’s infancy relative to the age of the earth. A lot of people need a disaster to rally around. It’s really a religion to them since it’s based on faith and flawed computer models. Tomorrow, they’ll announce the next deep freeze that is of course man made. Meanwhile, the alarmists such as Al Gore live in Mansions that consume generate tons of carbon into the atmosphere. If he really believed what he was saying, he’d live in a hovel.
Welcome to Below2C Sam.
Unfortunately it’s people like you, deniers, who are jeopardizing the world’s chances of tackling climate change. I guess what you’re saying is that wealthy people can’t be genuine in their concern over the climate. Would it be better for you if Al Gore were living on the streets somewhere? Would you find him more credible then?
Thank you for your feedback.