Using all of that teenage fight club energy to the best use possible, Greta Thunberg spoke at the Youth4Climate conference in Milan and used her time on stage to make sure that politicians know that she can see right through their fatigued attempt at making things happen and is done playing around, just 5 weeks before the critical climate summit in Glasgow UK.
Taking sub notes and calling out UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Greta says:
“This is not about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging or blah blah blah, build back better blah blah blah, green economy blah blah blah, net zero by 2050 blah blah blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words. Words that sound great, but so far, have led to no action.”
Many countries have already taken steps towards reducing their emissions as climate change has dominated the topic of most conversations since we have seen physical changes in our plantes behavior. China recently released a statement confirming they will no longer be taking action on building new coal plants in other countries.
“China’s overseas moratorium is a big deal,” said Li Shuo from Greenpeace.
“Beijing has been the last man standing in supporting coal projects across the developing world. Its ban on these projects will significantly shape the global energy landscape in the years to come.”
Details on what this means are still being finalized and yet to be released, however a private source mentioned that it could see 11 coal projects across 8 African countries completely cancelled which has been warmly welcomed by many people around the world. China will have to do some heavy stepping up after 2020 saw the country throw a 53%increase in its shares of global coal-fired power generation.
“The main event is for China to pledge a major cut in its emissions now, in this decade, as US, EU and others have,” tweeted former US climate envoy Todd Stern.
“China counts for 27% of global CO2 emissions. No chance to keep 1.5C alive unless China steps up for real,” he wrote, referring to the key temperature threshold that scientists believe is the threshold of highly dangerous warming”
The UK has tried to slip a little bit of fine print in their words to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035. It may sound great however the 78% has a baseline starting in 1990 and with current government efforts, or lack of, England is expected to deliver less than a quarter of the cuts needed in order to meet this goal. This figure also doesn’t account for goods being manufactured outside of the island and imported in, so Greta has politicians right in the spotlight wanting to phone a friend or go 50/50 for the answer to, ‘how do I get out of this one?’. Mr Johnson said in a recent conference that he will ‘push for action on coal, climate, cars and trees in particular at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November’.
“Of course we need constructive dialogue, but they (world leaders) have now had 30 years of blah blah blah and where has that led us?”
Greta continues, “but of course we can still turn this around. It is entirely possible, it will take drastic annual emission cuts unlike the world has ever seen. And as we don’t have the technological solutions that alone can deliver anything close to that, that means, that we will have to change”
“We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah blah blah. Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people.
According to analysis carried out by E3G, some of the highlights included:
- The US, EU and others pledging to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030
- Denmark and Costa Rica launching a Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance to phase out fossil fuels.
- Turkey is committing to ratify the Paris Agreement and is said to be working on a carbon cutting plan.
- Brazil indicated it would not block negotiations in Glasgow on carbon markets, one of the stickiest of the outstanding issues from the Paris agreement.
- India is said to be moving towards submitting a new NDC before Glasgow
We can all do our bit a little bit more to save the planet that is so unique in the universe to host us. Tag @Thejollytimes on instagram and show us what you are doing to point us in the right direction of healing.
