' You have stolen my dreams'

‘You have stolen my dreams’

UNITED NATIONS: Teenage activist Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders yesterday for failing to tackle climate change, unleashing the outrage felt by millions of her peers in the heart of the United Nations by demanding: ‘‘How dare you?’’

The Swedish campaigner’s brief address electrified the start of a summit aimed at mobilising government and business to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs last year despite decades of warnings from scientists.

‘‘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?’’ said Thunberg (16), her voice quivering with emotion.

‘‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.’’

Inspired by Thunberg’s solitary weekly protest outside the Swedish parliament a year ago, millions of young people poured on to the streets around the globe last Friday to demand governments take emergency action.

‘‘I was very struck by the emotion in the room when some of the young people spoke earlier,’’ French President Emmanuel Macron told the UN Climate Action Summit.

‘‘I think that no political decisionmaker can remain deaf to this call for justice between generations.’’

UN Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres, who organised the oneday event to boost the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat global warming, had warned leaders tocome armed with concrete action plans, not empty speeches.

‘‘Nature is angry. And we fool ourselves if we think we can fool nature, because nature always strikes back, and around the world nature is striking back with fury,’’ said Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister.

‘‘There is a cost to everything. But the biggest cost is doing nothing. The biggest cost is subsidising a dying fossil fuel industry, building more and more coal plants, and denying what is plain as day: that we are in a deep climate hole, and to get out we must first stop digging,’’ he said.

Nevertheless, there were few new proposals from governments for the kind of rapid change climate scientists say is now needed to avert devastating impacts from warming. The summit has, by contrast, been marked by a flurry of pledges from business, pension funds, insurers and banks to do more.

‘‘We have broken the cycle of life,’’ said Emmanuel Faber, chief executive of French food group Danone, who announced a ‘‘One Planet’’ initiative with a group of 19 major food companies to transition towards more sustainable farming.

‘‘We need your support for shifting agricultural subsidies from killing life into supporting biodiversity,’’ Faber said.

US President Donald Trump, who questions climate science and has challenged every major US regulation aimed at combating climate change, made a brief appearance in the audience of the summit along with Vicepresident Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He did not speak but listened to remarks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Merkel announced Germany would double its contribution to a UN fund to support less developed countries to combat climate change to ¤4 billion from ¤2 billion.

Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine said she would seek parliamentary approval to declare a climate crisis on the lowlying atoll, already grappling with sea level rise.

Heine said her country and New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and others who form the ‘‘High Ambition’’ bloc at UN climate negotiations would commit to achieving netzero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

With climate impacts such as extreme weather, thawing permafrost and sealevel rise unfolding much faster than expected, scientists say the urgency of the crisis has intensified since the Paris accord was agreed.

The agreement will enter a crucial implementation phase next year after another round of negotiations in Chile in December.

While some countries have made progress, some of the biggest emitting countries remain far behind, even as wildfires, heat waves and record temperatures have given glimpses of the devastation that could lie in store. — Reuters

❛ We are in a deep climate hole, and to get out we must first stop digging UN Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres