Exclusive: Climate striker speaks before UN event marking five years since the Paris accord
Damian Carrington is the Guardian’s Environment editor
Thu 10 Dec 2020 17.47 GMT
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The world is speeding in the wrong direction in tackling the climate emergency, Greta Thunberg has said, before a UN event at which national leaders have been asked to increase their pledges for emissions cuts.
Thunberg, whose solo school strike in 2018 has snowballed into a global youth movement, said there was a state of complete denial when it came to the immediate action needed, with leaders giving only distant promises and empty words.
The fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord is on Saturday and should have seen countries set out new plans to keep global heating below 2C and close to 1.5C. Current pledges would mean a catastrophic 3C rise in temperatures.
But the planned summit has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic until next November and a virtual one-day UN meeting will take place instead, involving up to 70 world leaders. The European Union will also try to agree a new 2030 emissions target on Friday at a Brussels summit.
Thunberg has released a video which calls leaders to account for failing to reverse rising carbon emissions. “We are still speeding in the wrong direction,” she said. “The five years following the Paris agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded and, during that time, the world has emitted more than 200bn tonnes of CO2.
