UNITED NATIONS - Swedish teenage activist
Greta Thunberg took her weekly campaign for greater action on
climate change to the gates of the United Nations on Friday,
urging "everyone who cares about our future" to join her when
world leaders gather in New York next month.
Thunberg, 16, started missing school on Fridays a year ago
to protest outside the Swedish parliament, sparking a global
climate strike movement known as Fridays for Future. She joined
14-year-old New Yorker Alexandria Villasenor on Friday, who
began picketing outside the United Nations in New York December.
A couple of hundred of other young protesters supported them
with signs that read "Help my home is on fire," "If you won't
act like adults, we will" and "Science not silence." Their
chants included "we are unstoppable, a better world is possible"
and "sea levels are rising and so are we."
Wearing t-shirts that read "In Greta we trust," New York
students Bianca Pilcher, 11, and Lila Sabag, 10, said they had
one message for world leaders: act now.
"I don't want to live a short life, I want to live a long
life and I want to have my world be healthy as well. I also want
to experience having children, having grandchildren and them to
not be like 'what have you brought me in to?'" said Pilcher.
Sabag said she wanted to help save the planet by trying "to
not use much carbon dioxide or fossil fuels or like plastics and
stuff." Then both girls chimed in together: "Always reuse."
Thunberg will speak at a Sept. 23 climate summit during the
annual gathering of world leaders for the U.N. General Assembly.
She sailed into New York Harbor on Wednesday in a zero-carbon
emissions boat, completing a nearly 14-day journey from England.
In a statement when she arrived in New York, Thunberg said:
"Everyone who cares about our future should join and strike on
20 and 27 September."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the
world faces a climate emergency and challenged leaders to come
to the 193-member United Nations next month with concrete,
realistic plans on how to better tackle the emergency.
"We absolutely need to keep the rise of temperature to 1.5
degrees Celsius to the end of the century and to be carbon
neutral in 2050 and to have a 45 per cent reduction of emissions
by 2030," he told reporters in France on Monday.
Thunberg intends to attend the 25th United Nations Climate
Change conference in Santiago, Chile, in December, planning to
make her way there without using air travel. She has taken a
year off school to campaign for climate action in the Americas
with plans to also visit Mexico and Canada.