Greta Thunberg, 2019 U.N. Climate Action Summit Transcript

GRETA THUNBERG: This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, 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!

[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 that you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight? You say you hear 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 this situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe.

[GASPS]

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. 50% may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]

How dare you pretend that this can be sold with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 and 1/2 years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable, and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you.

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]