HOW DARE YOU?
Young environmental activist Greta Thunberg may have shamed world leaders with her damning speech at the UN Climate Change Summit, but some people weren’t listening
AS WORLD leaders gathered in New York this week, a 16-year-old schoolgirl stepped up to upstage and shame them all. Environment activist Greta Thunberg made a fiery appearance at the United Nations Climate Summit during which she broke down in tears while furiously scolding international delegates.
“You come to us young people for hope – how dare you,” said the enraged teen.
“You have stolen my dreams, my childhood, with your empty words. 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 the fairy tale of endless economic growth. How dare you?
“How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?”
Thunberg told watching politicians she did not believe they understood the enormity of the situation, arguing if they did and they continued to fail to act, they would be “evil” and she refused to believe that.
The Swedish schoolgirl, who sailed from Plymouth to New York on a “zero-carbon” yacht, had been invited by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, to launch the summit by directly addressing world leaders.
For some Americans, it was all too much. Conservative political commentator Michael Knowles took to the airwaves on Fox News to discuss climate change initially arguing why a meatless diet could be more harmful to the environment.
“None of that matters because the climate hysteria movement is not about science,” said Knowles before turning his attention to Thunberg.
“If it were about science, it would be led by scientists rather than by politicians and a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left,” he said.
His attack on the teenager,who has Asperger’s, shocked not just America but the rest of the world.
However, it didn’t take long for the man who claims climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese to hurt US manufacturers, to weigh in.
“She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!’ Donald Trump mocked.
His words came after the President attended the summit for all of 14 minutes.
Trumps’s ridiculing of Thunberg should come as no surprise, given his alarming views on climate change.
With its love of big houses, gas-guzzling cars, blasting air-conditioners and neon lights, the United States has contributed more than any other country to the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is scorching the planet.
Home to just over 4% of the world’s population, America is responsible for almost a third of the excess CO2 that is heating the Earth.
Although China now emits far greater levels of greenhouse gases, under environment sceptic Trump, the States is heading backwards in terms of protecting the planet.
In fact, since coming to power, not only has he pulled the States out of the 195-nation agreement on climate change reached in Paris in 2015, he has rolled back 85 environmental restrictions.
I’m no left-wing eco-warrior, far from it, but after recently visiting the burning Amazon it is impossible to ignore the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
As we watch rainforests go up in flames and glaciers melt at record rates, with sea levels rising faster today than at any time in the last quarter-century, we would all be foolish not to play our parts in doing something about it.
Of course, there is a reason behind Trump’s refusal to go green.
The fossil fuel interests that run his administration are allowed to dismantle a half-century of environmental protections by successive presidents purely to keep him in power.
Trump isn’t a climate change denier, he’s a climate change nihilist.
His rolling back of regulations is speeding up the catastrophe while putting the polluters and plunderers in charge.
Trump does not, as Thunberg says, turn to young people for hope.
In his mind, he is the only hope.
“She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!’
Trump mocks climate change activist Greta Thunberg