The 2019 Climate Action Summit kicked off at the UN on Monday, where world leaders gathered to discuss serious strategies to mitigate climate change.
16-year-old Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg appealed to the world leaders in a passionate, angry and tearful speech to act urgently on climate change at the opening of a United Nations summit.
“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 for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
For four minutes, Thunberg held the room in thrall as she criticized leaders for talking about “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” while people suffer.
“People are suffering, people are dying, entire eco-systems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of the mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economical growth, how dare you?” said Thunberg.
In 2018, Thunberg launched the “Fridays For Future” movement or School Strike for Climate in Sweden, encouraging them to skip school and demand action on climate change from government.
While addressing, Thunberg predicted that the summit would not deliver any new plans in line with the radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are needed to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. She ended her speech by saying,
“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.”
