Black Lives Matter protests show world has reached a tipping point: Greta Thunberg
- The Swedish climate change activist said people cannot continue looking away from injustices such as racism and inequality
- She said the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic may provide a wake-up call on the environment, as it showed how to treat an emergency
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“It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things,” the 17-year-old said in an interview with the BBC. “We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.”
Thunberg’s interview aired as global capitals braced for another weekend of anti-racism protests in the wake of the death at the hands of a white policeman of the unarmed African American George Floyd.
Thunberg said “people are starting to find their voice, to sort of understand that they can actually have an impact”.
She also described being stunned by the depth of US poverty she discovered while travelling with her father in an electric car they borrowed from the former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“It was very shocking to hear people talk about that they can’t afford to put food on the table,” she said.
She described how she was constantly interrupted by world leaders as she prepared for her appearance before the United Nations General Assembly last year, including UN chief Antonio Guterres and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had formed a queue to speak to her and take selfies.
“Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, waits in line but doesn’t quite make it before it’s time for the event to start,” Thunberg recalled.
Thunberg’s blunt words to presidents and prime ministers, peppered with scientific facts about the need to urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions, have won her praise and awards, but also the occasional resistance and even death threats.
To Thunberg’s disappointment, her message does not seem to be getting through even to those leaders who applaud her work.
The message is certainly stark: Thunberg cites a UN report that estimates the world can only keep emitting the current amount of carbon dioxide for the next seven-and-a-half years. Any longer and it becomes impossible to meet the Paris climate accord’s ambitious goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century.
2019 was the year of climate change activist Greta Thunberg
The teenager said her US road trip opened her eyes to economic and social disparities affecting in particular indigenous, black and minority communities, voices she has sought to amplify in the climate debate.
“The climate and sustainability crisis is not a fair crisis,” Thunberg says. “The ones who’ll be hit hardest from its consequences are often the ones who have done the least to cause the problem in the first place. ”
Carbon emissions plunge as planet tackles coronavirus pandemic
Some critics have accused Thunberg of being a doom-monger. But she insists that her message is one of hope, not despair.
“There are signs of change, of awakening,” she said. “Just take the ‘Me Too’ movement, ‘Black Lives Matter’ or the school strike movement [for climate action] for instance.”
“The corona tragedy of course has no long term positive effects on the climate, apart from one thing only: namely the insight into how you should perceive and treat an emergency. Because during the corona crisis we suddenly act with necessary force.”
