Greta Thunberg: 'How dare you', UN Climate Action Summit - 2019

23 September 2019, New York City, USA

Thunberg responds to a question about the message she has for world leaders.
My message is that we'll be watching you.

This is all wrong. 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 young people for hope. How dare you!

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. 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. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

Thank you.

Greta Thunberg: 'You are not mature enough to tell it like it is', COP Katowice - 2018

14 December 2018, Katowice, Poland

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 15 years old. I am from Sweden.

I speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now.

Many people say that Sweden is just a small country and it doesn't matter what we do. But I've learned you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to.

But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular.

You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.

You are not mature enough to tell it like is.

Even that burden you leave to us children

But I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet.

Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury.

It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.

The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn't do anything while there still was time to act.

You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope.

We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.

We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself.

We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again.

We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time.

We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people. Thank you.

Bill Clinton: 'But the birds of that land decided that if they worked together they could raise the sky', Remarks on the International Coral Reef Initiative - 1996

22 November 1996, Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia

Thank you very much. Premier and Mrs. Borbidge, Mayor Berwick, Minister Hill and Mrs. Hill, members of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and to Minister Moore and Mrs. Moore, especially to Alicia Stevens for reminding us what this is all about today.

Hillary and I and our party have had a wonderful visit to Australia. We understand now why it is called the Lucky Country. But we believe that there is more than luck involved here. Today we celebrate the commitment of the people of this country, of the United States, and people all over the world to the proposition that we must preserve the natural resources that God has given us. We are here near the biggest, best managed protected marine and coastal area in the world for a clear reason: Australia has made a national commitment to be good stewards of the land with which God blessed you.

I am especially pleased today, as has already been said, that the Government of Australia is honoring the United States by naming a section of the Great Barrier Reef after Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson was the great American environmentalist; she was a marine biologist. Vice President Gore wrote about Rachel Carson: She brought us back to a fundamental idea lost to an amazing degree in modern civilization, the interconnection of human beings and the natural environment. That interconnection clearly imposes upon all of us a shared responsibility. To preserve a future for our children and grandchildren, we must care for our shared environment. It is a practical and a moral imperative.

We are citizens not only of individual nations but of this small and fragile planet. We know that pollution has contempt for borders, that what comes out of a smokestack in one nation can wind up on the shores of another an ocean away. We know, too, that recovery and preservation also benefits people beyond the borders of the nation in which it occurs. We know that protecting the environment can affect not only our health and our quality of life, it can even affect the peace. In too many places, including those about which we read too often now on the troubled continent of Africa, abuses like deforestation breed scarcity, and scarcity aggravates the turmoil which exists all over the world.

I am very proud of the work our two nations have done to preserve our natural heritage. Just as we have been allies for peace and freedom, we must be allies in the 21st century to protect the Earth's environment. Our work together on the International Coral Reef Initiative is a shining example of what we can achieve. Founded in 1994 by Australia, the United States, and six other governments, this initiative helps nations and regions to conserve, manage, and monitor coral reefs.

Pollution, overfishing, and overuse have put many of our unique reefs at risk. Their disappearance would destroy the habitat of countless species. It would unravel the web of marine life that holds the potential for new chemicals, new medicines, unlocking new mysteries. It would have a devastating effect on the coastal communities from Cairns to Key West, Florida, communities whose livelihood depends upon the reefs.

Steadily we are making progress. In this part of the world, the ICRI has played a crucial role in slowing the use of cyanide to harvest coral reef fish. Around the world, more than 75 nations and scores of organizations have participated in ICRI programs. Today, with your knowledge and leadership, we are seeing to it that the world's reefs make it into the next century safe and secure. And I thank you for that.

Let me say that our effort to save the world's reefs is a model for the work that we can do together in other environmental areas, and there is a lot of work to do. Deforestation is claiming an area the size of South Korea every year. Let us, together with the United Nations, develop a strategy for the sustainable management of all our forests.

Toxic chemicals and pesticides banned here and in the United States can still find their way into our lives, endangering our land, our water, and our children. Rachel Carson, whom we honor here today, helped alert us in the United States to these dangers. Let us now forge a global agreement to stop these toxic substances from being released into the world around us.

Today, thanks to the Montreal Protocol, we are slowing the production and the consumption of chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals that have been eating a hole in the Earth's ozone layer. We're on our way to closing the ozone hole that threatens Antarctica and Australia. Now we must see to it that this landmark treaty is enforced from one corner of the Earth to another. We need no more new holes in the ozone.

Finally, we must work to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. These gases released by cars and power plants and burning forests affect our health and our climate. They are literally warming our planet. If they continue unabated, the consequences will be nothing short of devastating for the children here in this audience and their children.

New weather patterns, lost species, the spread of infectious diseases, damaged economies, rising sea levels: if present trends continue, there is a real risk that sometime in the next century, parts of this very park we are here in today could disappear, submerged by a rising ocean. That is why today, from this remarkable place, I call upon the community of nations to agree to legally binding commitments to fight climate change.

We must stand together against the threat of global warming. A greenhouse may be a good place to raise plants; it is no place to nurture our children. And we can avoid dangerous global warming if we begin today and if we begin together.

If we meet all these challenges, we can make 1997 a milestone year in protecting the global environment. We can do it in a way that encourages sustainable development. One thing we've learned in recent years is that protecting the environment and promoting human progress are not incompatible goals; they go hand in hand. I am very pleased that the United Nations General Assembly will have a special session in New York next year to review our progress in advancing sustainable development since the Earth summit in Rio.

An Australian folktale has it that in the beginning the sky was so close to the Earth that it blocked out all the light. Everyone was forced to crawl in the darkness, collecting with their hands whatever they could find to eat. But the birds of that land decided that if they worked together they could raise the sky and make more room to move about. Slowly, with long sticks, they lifted the sky. The darkness passed, and everyone stood upright.

If we work together as those birds did, we can preserve our environment for our children, for their children, for generations beyond. Let us lift our sights and ourselves to that great challenge.

Thank you very much.

Al Gore: 'After the last no comes a yes, and on that yes the future world depends' COP 21, Paris Climate Conference - 2015

Video by Envirobeat

8 December 2015, COP 21 Conference, Paris, France

Last year was the first time in world history that CO2 levels did not go up when there was not a major recession or an event like the break up of the former Soviet Union.

This year it is too early to confirm this statistic but you have all seen the news stories that have come out yesterday. CO2 levels went down this year.

If that is confirmed we will look back on last year and this year as the time when we did reach the turning point. We are winning this. We must win it faster.  We must accelerate the pace.

A lot of damage has already been done.

More damage will occur because of the global warming pollution that is already in the atmosphere.

So we must speed up.

The march that took place on November 29th, of course there was due to be in one Paris and I myself understand completely the thinking of the French authorities, as I said at the beginning, we understand what they have gone through.

But I don’t want anyone here in Paris who didn’t see a march here, not to miss the fact that in cities all over hte world, there were mass marches to save the climate.

So the NGO community, the civil society and activists worldwide have done a fantastic job in mobilising people to demand action.

This was in Melbourne, November 27th, just before, the climate, there were marches all over the place. And it’s not just on the eve of the conference. Quebec City, Quebec is just a hero in my opinion, god bless Canada for all it has done here. This was a great march in April in Quebec.

Of course one year ago, on the eve of the special session of the United Nations, as amny as four hundred thousand people filled the streets of Manhattan.

And you may have heard how many of the leaders who spoke here on Monday, refer to the marches in the street.

So the best chance to address this climate crisis is here.

Now.

We have a few days left.

Whatever delegation you are following or are a part of, use these next 72 hours to double down on your commitment to DO THE RIGHT THING.

There are people who have been to previous conferences, and they look back on the long string of them, and they’re tempted to conclude, it’s not going to make any difference.

There was a poet in the United States in the last century called Wallace Stevens, who wrote the following line:

‘After the last no, comes a yes’

And on that yes the future world depends.

Every great moral cause that humanity has been faced with has met with a series of nos, addend fierce resistance. The abolition movement, the struggle for women’s suffrage and gender equity, which is ongoing, the civil rights movement, the struggle against apartheid, the struggle for the end of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation – all of these moral causes have met nos and fierce opposition.

But they all eventually came down to a single choice between one of two options: what is right, and what is wrong.

In this case, what is right is to save the future of our planet, and to say to future generations that we’ve done the right thing here.

Make no mistake, the next generation will inherit the Earth we bequeath to them, and depending upon their circumstances, they will ask one of two questions.

If they live in a world in which we have not addressed this crisis. In which we have not taken advantage of the opportunities to create jobs with renewables, and sustainable agriculture and fishing and forestries, and more efficiency.

If they suffer even worse floods and mudslides and droughts and the spreading of diseases into regions where they were unknown previously –the melting of the ice and the sea level rise, and the flows of millions of climate refugees – if they live in such a world, they would be justified in looking back at us, this group of us gathered here in Paris in December of 2015 and asking, ‘what were you thinking?! Why did you not act?!

But if they live in a world where there is a renewal of hope, where there are millions of jobs being created, where the carbon concentrations and greenhouse gas concentrations are declining, and where people are living and flourishing in communities with renewable systems and sustainable economies and if they look at their own children and feel secure in saying to them, ‘your world is going to be even better’, I want them to look back at us here, in this place, in this hour, on this day, and ask, ‘how did you find the moral courage? To break through the impasses  To rise above the differences. To see beyond the difficulties, across them to the bright future that was possible? And see the larger moral question that was at stake.

How did you do it? And part of the answer, will be that the men and women who came here to Paris from 195 countries around the world came together in support of a higher purpose.

To protect our home.

To protect our planet Earth.

We will say to them in answer, ‘we found out that political will was itself a renewable resource’.

Thank you very much, merci beaucoup.