Teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg has lashed out at the UKs response to the climate crisis in a speech to the UK Parliament.
In a typically blunt speech to MPs this afternoon, the 16-year-old Nobel peace prize nominee warned that the UK Government’s continued support for fossil fuel exploration is “beyond absurd.”
The Swede began the global Climate Strike movement – with school students around the world leaving class to demand real action from politicians on climate change.
Today she told UK MPs that her generation’s future has been “sold” by those that came before it.
“I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big,” she said. “I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to.”
“People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now, we may have nothing.
“Now, we probably don’t even have a future any more.
“Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money.
“It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.”
Thank you @HoC_Speaker_MP for welcoming @GretaThunberg to Parliament so she can deliver a powerful message to MPs and Party Leaders about the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/svz9ugbv1I
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) April 23, 2019
Carbon debt
She slammed the UK for its “mind-blowing historical carbon debt” as well as “for its current, very creative, carbon accounting.”
She said the “most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis” is the idea that we have to “lower” emissions rather than stop them altogether.
“The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels – for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine – is beyond absurd,” she said.
“This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”
Today I’m speaking at the British Parliament in London. #FridaysForFuture pic.twitter.com/z5bvDz4TV8
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) April 23, 2019
"Time to act"
The UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who listened to Miss Thunberg in parliament's Portcullis House, told her: "We have not done nearly enough."
He added: "Suddenly in the past few years it has become inescapable that we have to act.
"The time to act is now, the challenge could not be clearer, Greta you have been heard."
Opposition politicians genuinely co-operating cross party today to listen to @GretaThunberg and key voices from #Youthstrike4climate about what needs to happen to tackle our climate emergency.
But a no show from @theresa_may pic.twitter.com/XmUT8sGeoD— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) April 23, 2019
Empty chair
Ms Thunberg met with the leaders of the main political parties in the UK before delivering her speech – although Prime Minister Theresa May was not present as she was chairing a Cabinet meeting.
The meeting’s organisers left out an empty chair for Mrs May who, they said, had not responded to their invitation.
She told the politicians that avoiding climate breakdown will require “cathedral thinking” – noting that we must “lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”
“I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe,” she said.
“Humans are very adaptable; we can still fix this.
“But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg meets leaders of the UK political parties at the House of Commons in Westminster, 23-04-2019. Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire/PA ImagesClimate Strike
Ms Thunberg began the Climate Strike movement last year by refusing to go to school and instead making her way to the Swedish Parliament to protest on her own.
Over the months she has inspired students around the world to get involved– with strikes held in thousands of towns and over 100 countries last month.
