Greta Thunberg Shames the UN on Climate Change: ‘You Have Stolen My Dreams and My Childhood with Your Empty Words’
Climate change activist Greta Thunberg has made a powerful speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The 16-year-old campaigner, who last week led the international Climate Strike, told the assembled delegates that they had failed her and her generation. She was speaking at a panel on climate action.
“My message is that we’ll be watching you,” Thunberg said to applause and some laughter. She the launched into an emotional appeal and shamed the governments present.
“This is all wrong,” she said. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Greta Thunberg at #UNGA: "This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words."
Via ABC pic.twitter.com/NudonxKNss— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 23, 2019
“And yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. 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 fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
“How dare you,” Thunberg said to applause and cheering.
“For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”
“You say you here us and that you understand the urgency but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.”
Watch the video above, via ABC/Kyle Griffin/Twitter.
