In a highly committed speech at the UN, Sweden's Greta Thunberg reprimanded world leaders for their inaction on climate change at the start of a climate summit that opened on Monday (September 23rd) in New York.
"I should not be here, I should be at school on the other side of the ocean," the teenager said, her voice trembling but loud, reading a text from her chair. "How dare you?" You stole my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
"I'm one of the lucky ones, people are suffering, they are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing, we are at the beginning of mass extinction, and all you are talking about is money, and fairy tales of eternal economic growth? How dare you! "
"We will never forgive you"
This short speech is one of the most impactful that the 16-year-old girl has uttered since arriving in the United States at the end of August.
It has, as before, repeated the scientific facts confirming the accelerated warming of the planet, then attacked the heads of state and government present at the same summit, to which the Secretary-General of the United Nations had invited.
"You've let us down, but young people are beginning to understand your betrayal," Greta Thunberg said. "If you decide to let us down, I tell you, we will never forgive you, we will not let you get away with it."
"The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not, thank you," she concluded, much applauded in the Great Hall of the General Assembly.
With AFP