Environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg has dismissed a global agreement reached at the United Nations-hosted climate talks in Scotland’s Glasgow as “blah, blah, blah”.
At the end of the COP26 climate summit, as nations called for a “phase down” of coal power that critics describe as a “compromise” in way of attempts to cut down on fossil fuel, Thunberg said the real work continued outside these halls and activists like her would never give up.
Taking to her official handle on Twitter, Thunberg wrote, “The #COP26 is over. Here’s a brief summary: Blah, blah, blah. But the real work continues outside these halls. And we will never give up, ever.”
The youth campaigner also retweeted an earlier post of hers, where she had indicated that such ‘compromises’ in the way of climate action are equivalent to losing. “Unless we achieve immediate, drastic, unprecedented, annual emission cuts at the source then that means we’re failing when it comes to this climate crisis,” she had written, adding “small steps in the right direction, “making some progress” or “winning slowly” equals losing”.
However, there was some last-minute drama as India, backed by China and a few other coal-dependent developing nations, raised objections to this part of the agreement and asked for the wording to be rewritten. The clause was hurriedly amended to ask countries to accelerate their efforts towards a coal power “phase down” instead of “phase out”.
Thunberg and other activists had earlier denounced the conference for the way it was playing out, arguing that world leaders had failed to match their words with real action.
