The planet is “not dying, it is being killed and we know by who”, said Greta Thunberg, who excoriated world governments for their failure to prevent environmental breakdown in her first appearance at the annual UN climate talks in five years. Thunberg, 23, the Swedish activist who became famous for heading the school climate strike movement, delivered her stark message to those gathered at the Cop31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, amid the ongoing failure by countries to adequately address the climate crisis. When our human rights are being threatened by states and other institutions, it’s our duty to stand up and be the adult in the room and fight for everyone’s human rights.” Thunberg, who in recent years has shifted her focus towards other areas such as the conflict in Gaza, linked worsening global heating to other calamities such as war in an appearance alongside activists from Nepal, Canada and Australia.
The planet is not dying, it is being killed.” The intervention, on the fourth day of the two-week summit, came as world leaders who travelled to the Mediterranean coastal city delivered their own verdicts on the climate crisis and the faltering progress to address it. Andy Burnham, the British prime minister, who was the only G7 leader to attend the talks, said in a speech that the record hot summer in the UK was “not normal”. Beth John, a climate justice adviser at Oxfam GB, said Burnham’s appearance “sends a positive signal”.
But she added: “Showing up is not enough: a crisis of this scale needs substantive action, not just signals. The real test of climate leadership is delivery, not declarations.” The electrification goal is one of the main potential promises expected at the talks, which are being jointly presided over by Turkey and Australia. Some countries want the agreement text to specify that the electricity will be derived from clean energy sources.
Campaigners have criticised governments for their slow pace of emissions cuts and for, so far, failing to rally around a phaseout of fossil fuels in the negotiations. Current policies are set to heat the planet by 2.7C by the end of the century, a report by Climate Action Tracker found on Thursday. The catastrophic rise in temperatures is slightly more than the group expected last year and well above the 1.5C that world leaders have promised.
Thursday was rife with accounts of the harm caused by the climate crisis. Gita Chaudhary, Nepal’s environment minister, recounted the disastrous landslide that struck the country in August due to a melting glacier, claiming more than 1,500 lives. Nepal is working for rehabilitation, reconstruction and rebuilding the infrastructure.
But the communities, the culture, the lives, we cannot revive.” In the main conference room, a speech by Mohammad Mustafa, the prime minister of Palestine, drew a standing ovation from delegates as he described the environmental impact of the three-year war with Israel. The Turkish hosts of Cop31 have repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and refused to invite the country’s leadership to Antalya. Israel denies that it has committed genocide and insists it has fought a legitimate war to safeguard its own security.
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