On Monday, September 23, 2019, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who began demonstrating alone in front of the Swedish parliament in August, 2018 and now leads a global youth environmental movement, made an impassioned speech to delegates at the UN Climate Summit. Watch the complete speech above.
As detailed in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report, released Oct. 6, 2018, every factual and forward-looking statement Greta made in the speech is consistent with the best available scientific consensus.
Donald Trump, “leader” of the free world and president of the nation credited with the greatest cumulative historical greenhouse gas emissions, was not present for Thunberg’s speech. He did pop in at the UN Climate Summit for about 14 minutes, during which he listened to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech before applauding and then leaving without making any remarks. While other national leaders were speaking about their specific plans to meet their commitments under the Paris climate agreement, the U.S. leader was silent.
It was a striking juxtaposition between the bravery and moral authority of a teenager who, after starting her own global youth movement by herself, had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to demand action from all the world’s leaders; and the cowardice and intellectual and moral vapidity of a president who can’t face a 16-year-old and clapped emptily at another leader’s speech while working to remove his own country from the Paris agreement and roll back sundry existing environmental regulations, from auto standards to methane emission controls.
