“Everything and everyone we love is at stake”: Thunberg criticizes COP31 negotiations | Climate crisis news

A climate activist is urging world leaders to put people and planet before profit as she arrives at UN climate talks.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has condemned the United Nations climate talks as hypocritical and urged world leaders to put people and the planet before profits and power.

Thunberg made the comments on Tuesday as she arrived at the COP31 conference in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.

“It is hypocrisy to give host countries every year an opportunity to whitewash themselves and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by very destructive industries who profit from our extremely violent status quo,” Thunberg said.

“Our political and economic systems have become incompatible with human nature.”

The talks follow a year of deadly climate disasters, including heat waves and floods, and another energy shock caused by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Turkey and Australia, co-hosts of COP31, promote renewable energy and rooftop solar installations, but both still rely heavily on fossil fuels, particularly coal, to generate electricity. Previous host countries, including Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, are major oil producers.

Climate change “threatens everything,” Thunberg said, warning that “everything and everyone we love is at stake.”

“We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we all live on, so that a lucky few can continue to make unimaginable profits and maintain their geopolitical power,” she said.

Thunberg rose to prominence in 2018, at the age of 15, when she launched a lone “school climate strike” in front of the Swedish parliament.

The Antalya summit is the first she has attended since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, where she called world leaders’ promises “blah, blah, blah.”

She has also campaigned for other causes, including the Free Palestine movement, and more recently supported French students protesting for more school resources.

His arrival in Antalya aroused the enthusiasm of many young climate activists present at COP31, who are calling for more climate financing.

“I hope Greta’s presence here reminds us why we started this work: to push for meaningful change, to hold decision-makers accountable and to work toward a better future for all humanity,” Amber Turner, a 26-year-old from the Alliance of Small Island States, told the Associated Press news agency.

Qiyun Woo, a young environmentalist from Singapore, said Thunberg’s “powerful” presence “adds to the calls of a generation that is inheriting the consequences of these negotiations.”

COP31 takes place in Antalya until November 20.

Next year’s edition, COP32, is scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in November 2027.