Wed 29 September 2021:
Greta Thunberg, a climate activist, spoke out against the ‘blah, blah, blah’ of long unending climate negotiations over decades. She was speaking in Italy at a climate conference.
“Thirty years of blah, blah, blah,” Thunberg told the opening session of a Youth4Climate event on Tuesday.
Thousands of young activists from more than 190 countries have gathered in Milan this week. They will meet with policymakers to develop proposals for addressing climate challenges.
“So-called leaders have cherry picked young people to meetings like this to pretend they are listening to us, but they are not listening,” Thunberg said.
“There is no planet B … Change is not only possible but necessary, but not if we go on like we have until today.”
The United Nations released a study in August that increased fears that climate change is getting worse. The scenario was dangerously close to spiraling out of control, according to the report.
Youth activists who battled to put climate change on the global agenda years after leaders at the 1992 Rio Session in Brazil committed to address environmental issues are being challenged to help find solutions ahead of the UN’s COP26 summit in November.
Climate and energy ministers will convene at the same location for a pre-COP26 conference, and some of their recommendations will make it to the Glasgow summit.
The meetings come as soaring energy prices on world markets stoke fears of a popular backlash against climate reform.
The United Nations’ COP26 summit intends to persuade the almost 200 countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to take more ambitious climate action in order to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Young people need to start getting involved in the actual negotiations,” said Rose Kobusinge, a youth delegate from Uganda. “We want 1.5 (degrees) and we won’t go beyond that.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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