Thunberg thunders at Norway, Canada
MADRID: Greta Thunberg and 15 other youth climate activists urged Norway and Canada to wind down their oil and gas production, which they said violates children’s rights around the world.
In letters to the prime ministers of both countries, the campaigners contrasted their self-professed roles as international leaders in the fight against climate change against their planned increase in fossil-fuel production, according to a statement from law firm Hausfeld LLP, which represents the petitioners. Higher output breaches commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the activists said.
It’s not the first time Thunberg, 16, has gone up against Norway, which neighbours her native Sweden. In October, she criticised the Scandinavian countries’ emissions record, and cited Norway’s oil policies as one of the reasons for rejecting the Nordic Council Environment Prize.
“Norway must honour its responsibilities to children everywhere,” Thunberg and the 15 other activists said in the letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. “It must demonstrate how a major fossil fuels producer and exporter can transition away from these pollutants, blazing a trail for other fossil fuel-reliant economies to follow.”
The same 16 petitioners, including children from Nigeria, the US and the Marshall Islands, filed a legal complaint with the UN in September against France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey for not doing enough to tackle climate change.
Their latest missives coincide with the UN’s COP25 meeting in Madrid, where Thunberg arrived last week after sailing back across the Atlantic following her trip to the UN Climate Climate Action Summit in New York in September.
Norway is western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer. After three years of decline, its crude production is set to surge next year following the start of the giant Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea. Output will then drop again from the middle of the next decade.
Canada, which has the world’s thirdbiggest proven oil reserves, pumped more than Opec’s second-biggest contributor Iraq in 2018. The North American nation’s energy regulator expects crude output to grow almost 50% by 2040.