homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Climate activist Greta Thunberg slams world leaders at the UN

“This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here,” she said.

Fermin Koop
September 24, 2019 @ 10:00 pm

share Share

Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg told world leaders at the opening of a United Nations conference in New York City that they had stolen her childhood with “empty words.”

Credit: Wikipedia Commons

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg said at a U.N. climate change summit, admonishing them for not doing enough to protect the environment.

Thunberg, who traveled from Europe to New York for the summit on a zero-emissions sailboat, said she should be in school in her native Sweden rather than at the UN telling world leaders what to do to address climate change.

Listen to the science, she told them, which has been “crystal clear” for 30 years. She admonished them for leaving her generation with the task of sucking billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the air “with technologies that barely exist.”

“This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here,” said Thunberg, who spoke along with UN Secretary-General Antônio Guterres, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others. “The eyes of all future generations are on you,” she said.

Leaders from around the world, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have gathered in New York this week to make new pledges to curb global-warming emissions. US President Donald Trump, who wasn’t originally scheduled to attend, made a surprise appearance at the summit on Monday.

President Trump took to Twitter, citing the first half of that statement then saying Thunberg “seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

Guterres is calling on countries to step up commitments to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. “We face at least three degrees Celsius of global heating by the end of the century,” he said. “I will not be there, but my granddaughters will. And your grandchildren, too. I refuse to be an accomplice in the destruction of their home and only home.”

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in his speech after Thunberg’s at the summit the frustration she and other activists are expressing. “I was very struck by the emotion in the room,” Macron said. “I think they’ve identified an absolute urgency that we have to respond to here.”

Thunberg recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of the start of her climate change movement. Last August, she began striking by herself outside the Swedish parliament, and soon, students around the world began walking out of school, demanding action from their governments. She’s been called “the voice of the planet,” and has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

share Share

This 5,500-year-old Kish tablet is the oldest written document

Beer, goats, and grains: here's what the oldest document reveals.

A Huge, Lazy Black Hole Is Redefining the Early Universe

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a massive, dormant black hole from just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe? Ancient DNA Suggests So

A new study pinpoints the origin of the STD to South America.

The Magnetic North Pole Has Shifted Again. Here’s Why It Matters

The magnetic North pole is now closer to Siberia than it is to Canada, and scientists aren't sure why.

For better or worse, machine learning is shaping biology research

Machine learning tools can increase the pace of biology research and open the door to new research questions, but the benefits don’t come without risks.

This Babylonian Student's 4,000-Year-Old Math Blunder Is Still Relatable Today

More than memorializing a math mistake, stone tablets show just how advanced the Babylonians were in their time.

Sixty Years Ago, We Nearly Wiped Out Bed Bugs. Then, They Started Changing

Driven to the brink of extinction, bed bugs adapted—and now pesticides are almost useless against them.

LG’s $60,000 Transparent TV Is So Luxe It’s Practically Invisible

This TV screen vanishes at the push of a button.

Couple Finds Giant Teeth in Backyard Belonging to 13,000-year-old Mastodon

A New York couple stumble upon an ancient mastodon fossil beneath their lawn.

Worms and Dogs Thrive in Chernobyl’s Radioactive Zone — and Scientists are Intrigued

In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, worms show no genetic damage despite living in highly radioactive soil, and free-ranging dogs persist despite contamination.