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Economic success has unthinkable price tags, 16-year-old climate activist tells Davos
(EurActiv, 25 Jan 2019) As the World Economic Forum prepared to wind down on Friday (25 January), a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist took the stage to warn world leaders that their successes come at “unthinkable price tags” for the rest of the global community.
“In Davos, people like to tell about success stories but their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag and on climate change, we have to acknowledge that we have failed,” Greta Thunberg told a press conference in Davos, Switzerland.
“Adults keep saying we own to the young people to give them hope but I don’t want your hope, I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act as if our house is on fire because it is,” she said.
Thunberg was invited to the World Economic Forum by the Arctic Basecamp, a group of Arctic experts and scientists who set up a basecamp in Davos in a bid to raise awareness among the global economic elite of the urgency of the climate crisis.
Since she started her school strikes for climate action in Stockholm in August, Thunberg has become a prominent voice calling for stronger climate action, culminating with a speech she delivered at the UN climate conference (COP24) in Poland last December. There, she said world leaders were “behaving like children” and young people should take responsibility instead.
“Here is Davos, just like everywhere else, everyone is talking about money, it seems money and growth are our only main concerns,” she said.
But our house is on fire, she continued.
EurActiv, 25 Jan 2019: Economic success has unthinkable price tags, 16-year-old climate activist tells Davos
