(London) Environmental activist Greta Thunberg said on Sunday that United Nations climate conferences have become environmentally friendly washing machines (green wash) On the contrary, it should be used to mobilize in order to compel leaders to act.
Updated yesterday at 9:34 PM.
“The space for civil society this year is very limited” on 27e UN climate conference, Swedish activist argued during a question-and-answer session at London’s Southbank Center for her launch Climate notebook.
Twitter has already expressed its solidarity with “prisoners of conscience in Egypt before COP27”, which begins on November 6 in Sharm El Sheikh.
The 19-year-old activist argued that the COPs, previously held in Glasgow, were “not really aimed at regime change”, but to encourage incremental progress made futile in the face of the climate emergency, whose address on Sunday brought the London Festival of Literature to a close. .
According to her, COPs have become environmentally friendly washing machines, marketing operations to simulate real actions to tackle the climate crisis.
“As it is, COPs don’t really work, unless they are used as a mobilizing opportunity,” the young woman continued.
Released on Thursday The Big Climate Book Hundreds of collaborations include climate or other experts, including economist Thomas Piketty, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, or writer Naomi Klein.
All royalties will be donated to his eponymous foundation, then distributed to environment-related charities.
The activist says he wanted to write this book during the pandemic “to educate people, which is kind of ironic given that the thing I’m involved in is school strikes.”
On Sunday, she repeatedly called on everyone to get active, knowing there were “many different ways” to do so.
drastic changes
“The time for small steps is over and we need drastic changes,” according to her, to get them from business leaders or governments with a stake in the status quo, “we need billions of activists.”
I have repeatedly stated that the climate crisis was not the fault of all mankind, but the fault of the rich, while those who “historically exploited” suffer the most.
Instead of going in the right direction, the world is going full speed toward the wall, she warns, noting for example that “the amount of electricity produced from coal,” the most polluting fuel, “reached a historic record last year.
International pledges leave Earth on a 2.6°C warming trajectory, an outcome “pathetically inadequate” as the UN Secretary-General denounced last week, calling for an end to greenwashing, while 2022 has already seen an increase in climate catastrophes: dramatic floods Like in Pakistan, drought, heat waves or forest fires.
On Sunday, the 19-year-old Swedish woman said she never imagined she would start a planetary motion: “One thing leads to another,” she smiled.
She remembers that she started protesting outside the Swedish parliament in 2018 because she was “too shy and lonely” to join the existing NGOs. “It has worked better than I thought!” »
With a smirk, she says she “really liked to annoy people a lot,” especially those in power, “or who were,” like Donald Trump, the former US president who criticized her for so many years. Many times.
When asked about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, she laughed and then replied seriously that there were more compelling reasons than “spending a fortune on sending rockets into space.”
Finally, when asked about the controversial actions of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil, which have sprayed paint or soup on masterpieces recently, Greta Thunberg argued that there are “a lot of people who have become desperate and are therefore desperate” to make sense. To expect them to try new types of procedures.”
