Thunberg ‘forces leaders to
Climate activists such as Greta Thunberg make world leaders confront “hard realities” of government inaction when it comes to climate change, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
The First Minister said no world leader should be comfortable during the COP26 global climate conference, which began in earnest in Glasgow on Monday morning, and warned they should instead should be “bloody uncomfortable” due to their inaction.
Her declaration came as Ms Thunberg claimed politicians attending COP26 were just "pretending to take our future seriously".
Speaking to a large crowd in festival park on the first day of the leaders’ summit, the Swedish climate activist said: “This COP26 is so far just like the previous Cops and that has led us nowhere. They have led us nowhere.
She added: “Inside COP they are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously. Pretending to take the present seriously of the people who are being affected already today by the climate crisis.”
Ms Thunberg, addressing young protesters in Festival Park in Govan, criticised the “blah blah blah” of world leaders at the global gathering.
“Change is not going to come from inside there – that is not leadership, this is leadership,” she said.
“We say no more blah blah blah, no more exploitation of people and nature and the planet. No more exploitation. No more blah blah blah. No more whatever the f*** they are doing inside there.”
In September, Ms Thunberg, 18, mocked Prime Minister Boris Johnson by quoting parts of his speeches on climate change and adding “blah, blah, blah”.
Mr Johnson referenced the campaigner’s remarks during his speech to the COP26 opening session.
He said: “I was there in Paris six years ago when we agreed to net zero and to try to restrain the rise in the temperature of the planet to 1.5c, and all those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah – to coin a phrase – and the anger and impatience of the world will be uncontainable unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change.”
Ms Sturgeon, speaking at an event organised by the WWF after meeting Thunberg and fellow climate activist Vanessa Nakate in the conference’s ‘blue zone’, said these campaigners could force leaders out of complacency.
She said: “Those voices, often including for people like me, are really uncomfortable at times because they make us confront the hard realities of our own lack of delivery.
“But my goodness, they are so important to shake these sort of gatherings that will take place in here over the next few days out of the sense of complacency that surrounds them all too often.”
The climate activists discussed the importance of world leaders delivering on limiting global warming to 1.5C, and of the need for $100 billion of climate finance to be delivered.
Ms Sturgeon also announced a new £1 million Climate Justice Fund from the Scottish Government, which will help pay for damage and loss caused by adverse weather caused by climate change.
Ms Sturgeon said COP26 should be an event in which world leaders are made to feel “bloody uncomfortable” to force them into action.
She said: "What can everybody do? Make life really uncomfortable for any government, any leader that’s not doing enough. At times that will be my government and rightly so. We’ve all got to be pushed much harder, much faster.”
The First Minister said the biggest challenge facing Scotland was stopping drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and added that delivery of promises, not simply rhetoric, should be what leaders are judged on.
Scotland has missed its climate targets in each of the past three years.
Ms Sturgeon said: “Take oil and gas, all countries have really difficult issues to confront. For a country like Scotland, oil and gas is the most difficult. Tens of thousands of jobs dependent on that.
"But that can’t be an excuse for saying let’s just keep going, drilling for oil and gas indefinitely because that’s catastrophic for the planet, so instead it has to mean, facing up to that is our biggest challenge and working out how we move away from it as quickly as possible.”
The SNP separately came under fire for describing Scotland as a “nation in waiting” in a new advert at the start of the COP26 summit.
The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats hit out at Nicola Sturgeon and her party for the full-page newspaper advertisements.
With global leaders travelling to Glasgow, the First Minister was quoted as saying: “A nation in waiting welcomes the nations of the world.”
Opposition politicians accused the SNP of using the UN summit to push their independence message, with Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman Donald Cameron describing the ad as “disappointing but very predictable”.
He said: “Even when world leaders are in Glasgow to focus on the future of the planet, the first instinct of the SNP is to push their divisive independence obsession. No matter how big the issue, the SNP just can’t help themselves – they always focus on trying to break up the United Kingdom.”