'Our leaders are like children,' school strike founder tells climate summit

(The Guardian, 4 Dec 2018) Greta Thunberg, 15, told UN summit that students are acting in absence of global leadership.

Action to fight global warming is coming whether world leaders like it or not, school student Greta Thunberg has told the UN climate change summit, accusing them of behaving like irresponsible children.

Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden in August. But more than 20,000 students around the world have now joined her. The school strikes have spread to at least 270 towns and cities in countries across the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the US and Japan.

“For 25 years countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future,” she said. “I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.”

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” she said. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with. We have to make our voices heard.”

The conference of nearly 200 nations is taking place in Katowice, Poland, and its main task is to turn the vision of tackling global warming agreed in Paris in 2015 into concrete action. On Monday, Sir David Attenborough told the summit that without action “the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon”.

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The Guardian, 4 Dec 2018: 'Our leaders are like children,' school strike founder tells climate summit