Today, like all the world leaders, male & female, Putin, Trudeau & Trump think like they are kings – rulers of their individual kingdoms. But they are all emperors without clothes, and should be ashamed to lead their countries. (original image from the-three-kings.com)
At the UN climate change conference in New York on Monday, 23 September 2019, young Swedish climate change activator Greta Thunberg warned them (from full transcript of speech, courtesy of Asia Nikkei, asia.nikkei.com):
My message is that we'll be watching you. 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!
Millions of the young ones will be watching from them all over the world. Never has a message like this been delivered at any climate change conference – a challenge from below.
Representing the youth representing a new force, Greta says:
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
Emperors of Climate Cringe have stolen millions of dreams and childhoods.
And 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!
The Emperors of Climate Cringe are actually clothed with power but they use it for personal or provincial gains, not popular advances.
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
The Emperors of Climate Cringe have no mirrors, so they cannot see themselves when they are lying.
Greta almost called them liars to their faces:
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 the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
Greta looks at the Emperors of Climate Cringe and says that their collective promise is not enough:
The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5°C and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
A 50% chance of escaping the irreversible decline of the world is suicide.
Greta puts it mildly:
A 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us -- we who have to live with the consequences.
And then Greta puts it bluntly:
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!
Greta, may the force be with you!@517
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