Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg met with Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday (Thursday) urging her and other leaders to “treat the climate crisis like you treat any other crisis.”
“What we want is leaders. We want people to step up, to dare to step out of their comfort zones, to prioritize the future ahead of the now,” Thunberg told reporters after the 90-minute meeting.
Thunberg and other climate activists, including German Fridays for Future organiser Luisa Neubauer, delivered an open letter to the chancellor, demanding an immediate end to fossil fuel subsidies. The talk marked the second anniversary of Thunberg’s first school strike in front of the Swedish Parliament, which spurred the Fridays for Future movement.
Writing in The Guardian on 19 August she pointed out that although a lot had happened over the past two years “… the world has also emitted more than 80 gigatonnes(i) of CO2. We have seen continuous natural disasters 
taking place across the globe: wildfires, heatwaves, flooding, hurricanes, storms, thawing of permafrost and collapsing of glaciers and whole ecosystems. Many lives and livelihoods have been lost. And this is only the very beginning.”
She continued that today, “…leaders all over the world are speaking of an “existential crisis”. The climate emergency is discussed on countless panels and summits. Commitments are being made, big speeches are given. Yet, when it comes to action we are still in a state of denial. The climate and ecological crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction.’
She concluded, “… We still have the future in our own hands. But time is rapidly slipping through our fingers. We can still avoid the worst consequences. But to do that, we have to face the climate emergency and change our ways. And that is the uncomfortable truth we cannot escape.”
Note:(i) Gigatons of carbon; 1 gigaton equals 1 billion or 1,000,000,000 metric tons (a metric ton is 1000 kilograms); 1 metric ton = 2204.6 pounds (an English system ton is 2000 pounds).
You can read the full Guardian article at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/19/climate-crisis-leaders-greta-thunberg
You can also see Greta and George, the best short video of 2019 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=aUCD_24cygQ&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1E4NXrU9DtlBVwAVZQeVlrZyIUorHH1tfiivZBvo6hqEGyFHiX1xg1kDo
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