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Four Powerful Climate Change Speeches to Inspire You

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Looking to be inspired to take action on climate change? Watch these four powerful climate change speeches, and get ready to change the world.

Climate change is the most pressing concern facing us and our planet. As such, we need powerful action, and fast, from both global leaders and global corporations, right down to individuals.

I’ve got over 70 climate change and sustainability quotes to motivate people and inspire climate action. But if it is more than quotes you need then watch these four impassioned climate change speeches. These speeches are particularly good if you are looking for even more inspiration to inspire others to take climate action.

The Sustainability Speeches To Motivate You

Here are the speeches to know – I’ve included a video of each speech plus a transcript to make it easy to get all the information you need. Use the quick links to jump to a specific speech or keep scrolling to see all the speeches.

Greta Thunberg’s Climate Change Speech at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit

Leonardo dicaprio’s climate change speech at the 2014 un climate summit, yeb sano’s climate change speech at the united nations climate summit in warsaw, greta thunberg’s speech at houses of parliament.

In September 2019 climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit in New York City with this inspiring climate change speech:

Here’s the full transcript of Greta Thunberg’s climate change speech. It begins with Greta’s response to a question about the message she has for world leaders.

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!

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. 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!

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.

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.

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.

Fifty per cent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO 2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5°C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatons of CO 2 left to emit back on January 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO 2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

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.

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

Leonardo DiCaprio gave an impassioned climate change speech at the 2014 UN Climate Summit. Watch it now:

Here’s a transcript of Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change speech in case you’re looking to quote any part of it.

Thank you, Mr Secretary General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honoured to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen. One of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.

I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way. As if it were fiction, happening to someone else’s planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.

But I think we know better than that. Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here now .  We know that droughts are intensifying.  Our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it. Industry and governments know it. Even the United States military knows it. The chief of the US Navy’s Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat.

My friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces that difficult task. You can make history or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

I am not a scientist, but I don’t need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis. If we do not act together, we will surely perish.

Now is our moment for action.

We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy. They don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions of jobs.

This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation – if, admittedly, a daunting one.

We only get one planet. Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

Honoured delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living. But you do not. The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop. And now it’s YOUR turn, the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now.

I beg you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.

The Philippines’ lead negotiator  Yeb Sano  addressed the opening session of the UN climate summit in Warsaw in November 2013. In this emotional and powerful climate change speech he called for urgent action to prevent a repeat of the devastating storm that hit parts of the Philippines:

Transcript of Yeb’s Climate Change Speech

Here’s a transcript of Yeb’s climate change speech:

Mr President, I have the honour to speak on behalf of the resilient people of the Republic of the Philippines.

At the onset, allow me to fully associate my delegation with the statement made by the distinguished Ambassador of the Republic of Fiji, on behalf of G77 and China as well as the statement made by Nicaragua on behalf of the Like-Minded Developing Countries.

First and foremost, the people of the Philippines, and our delegation here for the United Nations Climate Change Convention’s 19 th  Conference of the Parties here in Warsaw, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for your expression of sympathy to my country in the face of this national difficulty.

In the midst of this tragedy, the delegation of the Philippines is comforted by the warm hospitality of Poland, with your people offering us warm smiles everywhere we go. Hotel staff and people on the streets, volunteers and personnel within the National Stadium have warmly offered us kind words of sympathy. So, thank you Poland.

The arrangements you have made for this COP is also most excellent and we highly appreciate the tremendous effort you have put into the preparations for this important gathering.

We also thank all of you, friends and colleagues in this hall and from all corners of the world as you stand beside us in this difficult time.

I thank all countries and governments who have extended your solidarity and for offering assistance to the Philippines.

I thank the youth present here and the billions of young people around the world who stand steadfastly behind my delegation and who are watching us shape their future.

I thank civil society, both who are working on the ground as we race against time in the hardest-hit areas, and those who are here in Warsaw prodding us to have a sense of urgency and ambition.

We are deeply moved by this manifestation of human solidarity. This outpouring of support proves to us that as a human race, we can unite; that as a species, we care.

It was barely 11 months ago in Doha when my delegation appealed to the world… to open our eyes to the stark reality that we face… as then we confronted a catastrophic storm that resulted in the costliest disaster in Philippine history.

Less than a year hence, we cannot imagine that a disaster much bigger would come. With an apparent cruel twist of fate, my country is being tested by this hellstorm called Super Typhoon Haiyan, which has been described by experts as the strongest typhoon that has ever made landfall in the course of recorded human history.

It was so strong that if there was a Category 6, it would have fallen squarely in that box. Up to this hour, we remain uncertain as to the full extent of the devastation, as information trickles in an agonisingly slow manner because electricity lines and communication lines have been cut off and may take a while before these are restored.

The initial assessment shows that Haiyan left a wake of massive devastation that is unprecedented, unthinkable, and horrific, affecting 2/3 of the Philippines, with about half a million people now rendered homeless, and with scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of a tsunami, with a vast wasteland of mud and debris and dead bodies.

According to satellite estimates, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also estimated that Haiyan achieved a minimum pressure between around 860 mbar (hPa; 25.34 inHg) and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated Haiyan to have attained one-minute sustained winds of 315 km/h (195 mph) and gusts up to 378 km/h (235 mph) making it the strongest typhoon in modern recorded history.

Despite the massive efforts that my country had exerted in preparing for the onslaught of this monster of a storm, it was just a force too powerful, and even as a nation familiar with storms, Super Typhoon Haiyan was nothing we have ever experienced before, or perhaps nothing that any country has every experienced before.

The picture in the aftermath is ever so slowly coming into clearer focus. The devastation is colossal. And as if this is not enough, another storm is brewing again in the warm waters of the western Pacific. I shudder at the thought of another typhoon hitting the same places where people have not yet even managed to begin standing up.

To anyone who continues to deny the reality that is climate change, I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of your armchair.

I dare you to go to the islands of the Pacific, the islands of the Caribbean and the islands of the Indian Ocean and see the impacts of rising sea levels; to the mountainous regions of the Himalayas and the Andes to see communities confronting glacial floods, to the Arctic where communities grapple with the fast dwindling polar ice caps, to the large deltas of the Mekong, the Ganges, the Amazon, and the Nile where lives and livelihoods are drowned, to the hills of Central America that confront similar monstrous hurricanes, to the vast savannahs of Africa where climate change has likewise become a matter of life and death as food and water becomes scarce.

Not to forget the massive hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard of North America. And if that is not enough, you may want to pay a visit to the Philippines right now.

The science has given us a picture that has become much more in focus. The IPCC report on climate change and extreme events underscored the risks associated with changes in the patterns as well as the frequency of extreme weather events.

Science tells us that simply, climate change will mean more intense tropical storms. As the Earth warms up, that would include the oceans. The energy that is stored in the waters off the Philippines will increase the intensity of typhoons and the trend we now see is that more destructive storms will be the new norm.

This will have profound implications on many of our communities, especially who struggle against the twin challenges of the development crisis and the climate change crisis. Typhoons such as Yolanda (Haiyan) and its impacts represent a sobering reminder to the international community that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. Warsaw must deliver on enhancing ambition and should muster the political will to address climate change.

In Doha, we asked, “If not us then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?” (borrowed from Philippine student leader Ditto Sarmiento during Martial Law). It may have fell on deaf ears. But here in Warsaw, we may very well ask these same forthright questions. “If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here in Warsaw, where?”

What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness.

We can stop this madness. Right here in Warsaw.

It is the 19 th  COP, but we might as well stop counting because my country refuses to accept that a COP30 or a COP40 will be needed to solve climate change.

And because it seems that despite the significant gains we have had since the UNFCCC was born, 20 years hence we continue to fail in fulfilling the ultimate objective of the Convention. 

Now, we find ourselves in a situation where we have to ask ourselves – can we ever attain the objective set out in Article 2 – which is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system? By failing to meet the objective of the Convention, we may have ratified the doom of vulnerable countries.

And if we have failed to meet the objective of the Convention, we have to confront the issue of loss and damage.

Loss and damage from climate change is a reality today across the world. Developed country emissions reduction targets are dangerously low and must be raised immediately. But even if they were in line with the demand of reducing 40-50% below 1990 levels, we would still have locked-in climate change and would still need to address the issue of loss and damage.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture and the situation is such that even the most ambitious emissions reductions by developed countries, who should have been taking the lead in combatting climate change in the past two decades, will not be enough to avert the crisis.

It is now too late, too late to talk about the world being able to rely on Annex I countries to solve the climate crisis. We have entered a new era that demands global solidarity in order to fight climate change and ensure that the pursuit of sustainable human development remains at the fore of the global community’s efforts. This is why means of implementation for developing countries is ever more crucial.

It was the Secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 1992, Maurice Strong who said that “History reminds us that what is not possible today, may be inevitable tomorrow.”

We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway.

I speak for my delegation. But more than that, I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm. I also speak for those who have been orphaned by this tragedy. I also speak for the people now racing against time to save survivors and alleviate the suffering of the people affected by the disaster.

We can take drastic action now to ensure that we prevent a future where super typhoons are a way of life. Because we refuse, as a nation, to accept a future where super typhoons like Haiyan become a fact of life. We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families, suffering the devastation and misery, having to count our dead, become a way of life. We simply refuse to.

We must stop calling events like these as natural disasters. It is not natural when people continue to struggle to eradicate poverty and pursue development and get battered by the onslaught of a monster storm now considered as the strongest storm ever to hit land. It is not natural when science already tells us that global warming will induce more intense storms. It is not natural when the human species has already profoundly changed the climate.

Disasters are never natural. They are the intersection of factors other than physical. They are the accumulation of the constant breach of economic, social, and environmental thresholds.

Most of the time disasters are a result of inequity and the poorest people of the world are at greatest risk because of their vulnerability and decades of maldevelopment, which I must assert is connected to the kind of pursuit of economic growth that dominates the world. The same kind of pursuit of so-called economic growth and unsustainable consumption that has altered the climate system.

Now, if you will allow me, to speak on a more personal note.

Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in my family’s hometown and the devastation is staggering. I struggle to find words even for the images that we see from the news coverage. I struggle to find words to describe how I feel about the losses and damages we have suffered from this cataclysm.

Up to this hour, I agonize while waiting for word as to the fate of my very own relatives. What gives me renewed strength and great relief was when my brother succeeded in communicating with us that he has survived the onslaught. In the last two days, he has been gathering bodies of the dead with his own two hands. He is hungry and weary as food supplies find it difficult to arrive in the hardest-hit areas.

We call on this COP to pursue work until the most meaningful outcome is in sight. Until concrete pledges have been made to ensure mobilisation of resources for the Green Climate Fund. Until the promise of the establishment of a loss and damage mechanism has been fulfilled. Until there is assurance on finance for adaptation. Until concrete pathways for reaching the committed 100 billion dollars have been made. Until we see real ambition on stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. We must put the money where our mouths are.

This process under the UNFCCC has been called many names. It has been called a farce. It has been called an annual carbon-intensive gathering of useless frequent flyers. It has been called many names. But it has also been called “The Project To Save The Planet”. It has been called “Saving Tomorrow Today”. We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now. Right here, in the middle of this football field.

I call on you to lead us. And let Poland be forever known as the place we truly cared to stop this madness. Can humanity rise to the occasion? I still believe we can.

Finally, in April 2019, Greta spoke at the Houses of Parliament in the UK. Here she gave this powerful climate change speech to the UK’s political leaders:

Transcript of Greta’s Climate Change Speech

Here is the full transcript of Greta’s climate change speech:

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.

I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.

Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?

In the year 2030, I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.

I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big. I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.

Now we probably don’t even have a future anymore.

Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit and that you only live once.

You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.

Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless, in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO 2 emissions by at least 50%.

And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.

Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost.

Nor do these scientific calculations include already locked-in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity – or climate justice – clearly stated throughout the Paris Agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.

We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these “points of no return” may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.

These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC.

Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.

During the last six months, I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars, and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it, and nothing has changed. In fact, the emissions are still rising.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere. And the basic problem is that basically nothing is being done to halt – or even slow – climate and ecological breakdown, despite all the beautiful words and promises.

The UK is, however, very special. Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt but also for its current, very creative, carbon accounting.

Since 1990 the UK has achieved a 37% reduction of its territorial CO 2 emissions, according to the Global Carbon Project. And that does sound very impressive. But these numbers do not include emissions from aviation, shipping, and those associated with imports and exports. If these numbers are included the reduction is around 10% since 1990 – or an average of 0.4% a year, according to Tyndall Manchester. And the main reason for this reduction is not a consequence of climate policies, but rather a 2001 EU directive on air quality that essentially forced the UK to close down its very old and extremely dirty coal power plants and replace them with less dirty gas power stations. And switching from one disastrous energy source to a slightly less disastrous one will of course result in a lowering of emissions.

But perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to “lower” our emissions. Because that is far from enough.

Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1.5-2 ° C of warming. The “lowering of emissions” is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades or less. And by “stop” I mean net-zero – and then quickly on to negative figures. That rules out most of today’s politics.

The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of “stopping” emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual. The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels – for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine – is beyond absurd.

This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.

People always tell me and the other millions of school strikers that we should be proud of ourselves for what we have accomplished. But the only thing that we need to look at is the emission curve. And I’m sorry, but it’s still rising. That curve is the only thing we should look at.

Every time we make a decision we should ask ourselves; how will this decision affect that curve? We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases. We should no longer only ask: “Have we got enough money to go through with this?” but also: “Have we got enough of the carbon budget to spare to go through with this?” That should and must become the centre of our new currency.

Many people say that we don’t have any solutions to the climate crisis. And they are right. Because how could we? How do you “solve” the greatest crisis that humanity has ever faced? How do you “solve” a war? How do you “solve” going to the moon for the first time? How do you “solve” inventing new inventions?

The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.

“So, exactly how do we solve that?” you ask us – the schoolchildren striking for the climate.

And we say: “No one knows for sure. But we have to stop burning fossil fuels and restore nature and many other things that we may not have quite figured out yet.”

Then you say: “That’s not an answer!”

So we say: “We have to start treating the crisis like a crisis – and act even if we don’t have all the solutions.”

“That’s still not an answer,” you say.

Then we start talking about circular economy and rewilding nature and the need for a just transition. Then you don’t understand what we are talking about.

We say that all those solutions needed are not known to anyone and therefore we must unite behind the science and find them together along the way. But you do not listen to that. Because those answers are for solving a crisis that most of you don’t even fully understand. Or don’t want to understand.

You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist anymore. Because you did not act in time.

Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.

Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.

We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.

We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.

I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me.

Hopefully, these climate change speeches will encourage you to take action in your local community. If you need more inspiration then head to my post on the best TED Talks on climate change , my guide to the best YouTube videos on climate change , and the sustainability poems to inspire you.

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Wendy Graham is a sustainability expert and the founder of Moral Fibres, where's she's written hundreds of articles on since starting the site in 2013. She's dedicated to bringing you sustainability advice you can trust.

Wendy holds a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Geography and an MSc (with Distinction) in Environmental Sustainability - specialising in environmental education.

As well as this, Wendy brings 17 years of professional experience working in the sustainability sector to the blog.

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Transcript: Greta Thunberg's Speech At The U.N. Climate Action Summit

Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.'s Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday. Here's the full transcript of Thunberg's speech, beginning with her response to a question about the message she has for world leaders.

"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!

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. 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!

'This Is All Wrong,' Greta Thunberg Tells World Leaders At U.N. Climate Session

"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.

"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.

"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

"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.

"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

"Thank you."

• climate change
• greta thunberg

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

Gretchen Frazee Gretchen Frazee

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/read-climate-activist-greta-thunbergs-speech-to-the-un

Read climate activist Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg chastised world leaders Monday for failing younger generations by not taking sufficient steps to stop climate change.

“You have stolen my childhood and my dreams with your empty words,” Thunberg said at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.

Thunberg traveled to the U.S. by sailboat last month so she could appear at the summit. She and other youth activists led international climate strikes on Friday in an attempt to garner awareness ahead of the UN’s meeting of political and business leaders.

Read Greta Thunberg’s speech below:

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?

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, 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 fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?

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? 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.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting up irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice.

They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us. We who have to live with the consequences. To have a 67 percent chance of staying below the 1.5 degree of temperature rise, the best odds given by the IPCC, the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on January 1, 2018.

Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 that entire budget will be gone is less than 8 and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us, but 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. We will not let you get away with this, right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not.

Gretchen Frazee is a Senior Coordinating Broadcast Producer for the PBS NewsHour.

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Greta Thunberg Ted Talk Transcript: School Strike For Climate

Climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a Ted Talk speech titled “School strike for climate – save the world by changing the rules” on December 12, 2018. Read the transcript of her speech here.

Transcribe Your Own Content Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling.

Greta Thunberg: ( 00:07 ) When I was about eight years old, I first heard about something called climate change or global warming. Apparently that was something humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources. I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans who are an animal species among others could be capable of changing the earth’s climate. Because if we were and if it was really happening, we wouldn’t be talking about anything else. As soon as you turn on the TV, everything would be about that; headlines, radio, newspapers. You would never read or hear about anything else as if there was a world war going on. But no one ever talked about it. If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were the no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal?

Greta Thunberg: ( 01:25 ) To me that did not add up. It was too unreal. So when I was 11, I became ill. I fell into depression. I stopped talking and I stopped eating. In two months, I lost about 10 kilos of weight. Later on, I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, OCD and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary. Now is one of those moments. For those of us who are on the spectrum, almost everything is black or white. We aren’t very good at lying and we usually don’t enjoy participating in the social game that the rest of you seem so fond of. I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange, especially when it comes to the sustainability crisis where everyone keeps saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all and yet they just carry on like before. I don’t understand that because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions.

Greta Thunberg: ( 02:53 ) To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change. Rich countries like Sweden need to start reducing emissions by at least 15% every year. And that is so that we can stay below a two degree warming target. Yet as the IPCC have recently demonstrated, aiming instead for 1.5 degrees Celsius would significantly reduced the climate impacts, but we can only imagine what that means for reducing emissions. You would think the media and every one of our leaders would be talking about nothing else, but they never even mention it. Nor does anyone ever mention the greenhouse gases already locked in the system, nor that air pollution is hiding a warming so that when we stop burning fossil fuels, we already have an extra level of warming, perhaps as high as 0.5 to 1.1 degrees Celsius. Furthermore does hardly anyone speak about the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction with up to 200 species going extinct every single day.

Greta Thunberg: ( 04:16 ) That the extinction rate is today between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than what is seen as normal. Nor does hardly anyone ever speak about the aspect of equity or climate justice clearly stated everywhere in the Paris Agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale. That means that rich countries need to get down to zero emissions within six to 12 years with today’s emission speed. And that is so that people in poorer countries can have a chance to heighten their standard of living by building some of the infrastructure that we have already built, such as roads, schools, hospitals, clean drinking water, electricity, and so on. Because how can we expect countries like India or Nigeria to care about the climate crisis if we who already have everything don’t care even a second about it, or our actual commitments to the Paris Agreement.

Greta Thunberg: ( 05:26 ) So why are we not reducing our emissions? Why are they in fact still increasing? Are we knowingly causing a mass extinction? Are we evil? No, of course not. People keep doing what they do because the vast majority doesn’t have a clue about the actual consequences of our everyday life and they don’t know what the rapid changes required. We will think we know and we will think everybody knows, but we don’t because how could we. If there really was a crisis, and if this crisis was caused by our emissions, you would at least see some signs, not just flooded cities, tens of thousands of dead people, the whole nations leveled to piles of torn down buildings. You would see some restrictions, but no, and no one talks about it.

Greta Thunberg: ( 06:34 ) There are no emergency meetings, no headlines, no breaking news. No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. Even most climate scientists or green politicians keep on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy. If I live to be 100, I will be alive in the year 2103. When you think about the future today, you don’t think beyond the year 2050. By then I will, in the best case, not even have lived half of my life. What happens next? The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children or grandchildren, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there was still time to act.

Greta Thunberg: ( 07:47 ) What we do or don’t do right now will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren. What we do or don’t do right now, me and my generation can’t undo in the future. So when school started in August of this year, I decided that this was enough. I sat myself down on the ground outside of the Swedish parliament. I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can solve the climate crisis. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions, all we have to do is to wake up and change.

Greta Thunberg: ( 08:44 ) And why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society? Some people say that Sweden is just a small country and that it doesn’t matter what we do. But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could all do together if we wanted to.

Greta Thunberg: ( 09:30 ) Now we’re almost at the end of my talk and this is where people usually starts talking about hope, solar panels, wind power, circular economy, and so on. But I’m not going to do that. We’ve had 30 years of pep talking and selling positive ideas. And I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work because it you would have the emissions would have gone down by now, they haven’t. And yes, we do need hope. Of course, we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then hope will come. Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change and it has to start today. Thank you.

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‘You Have Stolen My Dreams and My Childhood’: Greta Thunberg Gives Powerful Speech at UN Climate Summit

I n an emotional speech at the United Nations during the Climate Action Summit on Monday, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg appealed to world leaders about the grave need to stop the effects of climate change.

“You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” she said. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.”

Thunberg grew tearful, as she continued to condemn what she sees as the lack of action on part of leaders around the world to halt climate change. “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 2019 Climate Action Summit kicked off at the UN on Monday, where world leaders gathered to discuss serious strategies to mitigate climate change. Representatives of participating nations were told by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to come up with “concrete, realistic plans” to further their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and get to net zero emissions by 2050.

Thunberg cited more than 30 years of scientific evidence showing the consequences of a perpetually warming globe and delivered searing criticism of politicians who were aware of the science, but still did nothing.

“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,” she said. “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.”

Thunberg spoke at the UN following her appearance at the Global Climate Strike in New York City on Friday where she addressed the crowd of protestors , saying, “Our house is on fire. We will do everything in our power to stop this crisis from getting worse.”

Speaking to the world leaders at the climate summit Monday, Thunberg echoed her earlier message and offered a warning. “You are failing us. But 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. We will not let you get away with this.”

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Climate Action: It’s time to make peace with nature, UN chief urges

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The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has described the fight against the climate crisis as the top priority for the 21st Century, in a passionate, uncompromising speech delivered on Wednesday at Columbia University in New York.

The landmark address marks the beginning of a month of UN-led climate action, which includes the release of major reports on the global climate and fossil fuel production, culminating in a climate summit on 12 December, the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

Nature always strikes back

Mr. Guterres began with a litany of the many ways in which nature is reacting, with “growing force and fury”, to humanity’s mishandling of the environment, which has seen a collapse in biodiversity, spreading deserts, and oceans reaching record temperatures.

The link between COVID-19 and man-made climate change was also made plain by the UN chief, who noted that the continued encroachment of people and livestock into animal habitats, risks exposing us to more deadly diseases.

And, whilst the economic slowdown resulting from the pandemic has temporarily slowed emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, levels of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane are still rising, with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at a record high. Despite this worrying trend, fossil fuel production – responsible for a significant proportion of greenhouse gases – is predicted to continue on an upward path.

‘Time to flick the green switch’

The appropriate global response, said the Secretary-General, is a transformation of the world economy, flicking the “green switch” and building a sustainable system driven by renewable energy, green jobs and a resilient future.

One way to achieve this vision, is by achieving net zero emissions (read our feature story on net zero for a full explanation, and why it is so important). There are encouraging signs on this front, with several developed countries, including the UK, Japan and China, committing to the goal over the next few decades.

Mr. Guterres called on all countries, cities and businesses to target 2050 as the date by which they achieve carbon neutrality – to at least halt national increases in emissions - and for all individuals to do their part.

With the cost of renewable energy continuing to fall, this transition makes economic sense, and will lead to a net creation of 18 million jobs over the next 10 years. Nevertheless, the UN chief pointed out, the G20, the world’s largest economies, are planning to spend 50 per cent more on sectors linked to fossil fuel production and consumption, than on low-carbon energy.

Put a price on carbon

For years, many climate experts and activists have called for the cost of carbon-based pollution to be factored into the price of fossil fuels, a step that Mr. Guterres said would provide certainty and confidence for the private and financial sectors.

Companies, he declared, need to adjust their business models, ensuring that finance is directed to the green economy, and pension funds, which manage some $32 trillion in assets, need to step and invest in carbon-free portfolios.

Far more money, continued the Secretary-General, needs to be invested in adapting to the changing climate, which is hindering the UN’s work on disaster risk reduction. The international community, he said, has “both a moral imperative and a clear economic case, for supporting developing countries to adapt and build resilience to current and future climate impacts”.

Everything is interlinked

The COVID-19 pandemic put paid to many plans, including the UN’s ambitious plan to make 2020 the “super year” for buttressing the natural world. That ambition has now been shifted to 2021, and will involve a number of major climate-related international commitments.

These include the development of a plan to halt the biodiversity crisis; an Oceans Conference to protect marine environments; a global sustainable transport conference; and the first Food Systems Summit, aimed at transforming global food production and consumption.

Mr. Guterres ended his speech on a note of hope, amid the prospect of a new, more sustainable world in which mindsets are shifting, to take into account the importance of reducing each individual’s carbon footprint.

Far from looking to return to “normal”, a world of inequality, injustice and “heedless dominion over the Earth”, the next step, said the Secretary-General, should be towards a safer, more sustainable and equitable path, and for mankind to rethink our relationship with the natural world – and with each other.

You can read the full speech here .

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General December 2, 2020

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Climate change is THE challenge of our times. It is up to us all to demonstrate leadership

Mr. Huang Runqiu, CCICED Chinese Executive Vice Chairperson Minister of Ecology and Environment 

Steven Guilbeault, International Executive Vice Chairperson of CCICED, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Canada, 

Fellow Vice Chairpersons 

Excellencies, colleagues and friends.  

It is an honour to serve as Vice Chairperson of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) alongside so many distinguished colleagues. I am pleased to be in Beijing for this Annual General Meeting (AGM).  

By providing key policy recommendations and setting the CCICED’s research priorities for the next year, this AGM can strengthen China’s efforts to address the three environmental planetary crises: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste.  

Poor and marginalized communities have been suffering for years as result of the three crises. This suffering is now spreading to every nation and community. Our planet, our health and our economies are in serious and immediate peril.  

July was the hottest month in recorded history. China hit a record temperature of 52.2 degrees C in Turpan, close to the Kumtag Desert. Four billion people in the Asia-Pacific region are exposed to air pollution. Nature and biodiversity loss continues, with fears growing over the impacts on food systems.   

And so it is clear that the entire world needs to rapidly pivot in every sector to dampen these three crises. That is why I am particularly pleased that the CCICED’s recommendations this year focus on areas that can deliver these pivots – from emissions reductions to green finance to implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework. These are areas that exactly align with UNEP’s mandate. Let’s look at just a few.  

One, carbon neutrality.   

China’s commitments to peak emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral before 2060 are welcome. And China is, of course, making strides. As the CCICED’s 2022-2023 policy study showed, China contributed around one third of the world’s installed renewable energy capacity in 2021. These numbers are remarkable.   

Allow me to zoom in on climate for a moment and to highlight what I highlight in many of my speeches across the world. It is my contention that climate change is bigger than anything planet earth and, we, its human occupants, have ever experienced. Bigger than politics. Bigger than competition amongst and between nations. Bigger than nations and their civilisations and bigger than our collective history. It is, in the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, an existential crisis. I have therefore highlighted in my talks and speeches across the world that climate change cannot be lost in the squabble between nations. Cannot be lost when other crises appear on our doorstep. Lost in the squabble of domestic politics. Lost in the squabble of trade and competition. Or get pushed to the back burner to win the next election or to pacify domestic climate deniers. Or pushed to the back burner to address economic woes. Climate change is THE challenge of our times. And it is up to us all to demonstrate leadership. Here and now.  

For China, therefore, the CCICED recommendation to formulate a systematic coal power phase-out policy involving a number of considerations to maximize benefits is therefore noteworthy of attention. Similarly, the recommendation to move forward faster, science-based strategic planning and policy design are key in areas such as implementing the “1+N” policy system, promoting clean vehicles and boosting energy efficiency. And, of course, I echo the UN Secretary-General’s call for no new coal power plants, domestically or financed abroad.  

China’s renewable energy industry is second to none. This sector is expanding at exponential speed for which China is to be congratulated. With an intensification on the efforts to control and reduce energy demand and with a focus on energy efficiency and with continued focus on acceleration of decarbonization of the high-emitting industry sectors with a clear target of phasing down coal use, China holds the promise of leading the world in demonstrating ambition for climate action.  

Two, reboot consumption and production.   

Unsustainable consumption and production are fuel to the fire of the three crises, so the CCICED’s taskforce on this issue is important. Even more important is China’s full engagement in finalizing the global deal to end plastic pollution. A deal that, by 2024, must be ready to enable the complete redesign of products, packaging and systems. A deal that reduces plastic use, creates the conditions for true circularity and delivers justice for vulnerable communities. We at UNEP applaud China’s 2018 decision no longer to accept imported plastic waste. We also recognize that when it comes to plastic pollution, we cannot recycle our way out of the mess of plastic pollution. We need a complete rethink. Numbers indicate that China produces some 30% of the world’s plastic. So there are tremendous opportunities here for Chinese R&D to invest in reinventing the products that we envelope in plastic. Must the products be liquid? Can the products be delivered in dry form? What are the alternative packaging opportunities? There is a new economy ahead to replace plastic and the early bird gets the worm. So the CCICED’s recommendation for better guidelines in China on Extended Producer Responsibility, the reuse and recycling of plastic products, and the development of viable alternatives are in line with this reboot.   

Three, implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).    

Let me here start out with congratulating China’s Presidency of COP15 under the able leadership of Minister Huang. Let me also stress that the goals of the GBF are consistent with China’s ideal of ecological civilization. We will delve more into this topic during tomorrow’s Open Forum. Now, let me just say this: wins under the GBF that restore nature’s infrastructure are wins across triple planetary crisis. We need to redline protected areas, fulfil the restoration agenda, and finance nature-based solutions. I ask China to demonstrate the same drive it showed in getting the GBF agreed to implementing the framework itself.  

Friends,  

The CCICED has much more on its AGM agenda and draft workplan. Reorienting finance and investment to align with the health of the planet. Unlocking the potential of digital transformation. Harnessing the Blue Economy for food security, jobs and carbon neutrality.  

What is clear is that the CCICED and UNEP want the same thing: a healthier planet upon which people of all nations live in harmony with nature and each other. I look forward to our discussions on how UNEP can support the CCICED and China to make this dream a reality.  

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Read Greta Thunberg's full speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit

Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg spoke at the United Nations on Monday about climate change, accusing world leaders of inaction and half-measures.

Here are her full remarks:

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!

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words 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 fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

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.

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.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice.

They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

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.

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Remarks by President   Biden on Actions to Tackle the Climate   Crisis

Brayton Point Power Station Somerset, Massachusetts

2:43 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  And thank you for your patience.  You’ve been sitting out here.  Appreciate — please, have a seat, if you have one.

Well, hello, Massachusetts.  (Applause.)  It’s an honor to be with your outstanding members of Congress today: Senator Ed Markey.  Ed?  Where’s — there you go.  (Applause.)  Senator Elizabeth Warren.  (Applause.)  Congressman Auchincloss — -oss.  Where is she?  There you go, Jake.  Bill Keating — Congressman.  (Applause.) 

And your great former members and one of my dearest friends, John Kerry, who’s doing a great job leading our international — (applause) — Special Presidential Envoy on Climate, traveling the world and talking with an awful lot of people he’s talking into moving more than they’ve been doing. 

And another great Massachusetts nata- — native, Gina McCarthy.  Gina?  (Applause.)  There she is.  My National Climate Advisor is leading our climate efforts here at home.

It’s an honor to be joined by your neighbor by — your neighbor from Rhode Island.  He’s not a bad guy at all.  (Laughter.)  I live in his house.  Sheldon Whitehouse — a great champion — (applause) — a great champion of the environment.  And he’d been banging away at it.

I come here today with a message: As President, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger.  And that’s what climate change is about.  It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger.

The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.

The U.N.’s leading international climate scientists called the latest climate report nothing less than, quote, “code red for humanity.”  Let me say it again: “Code red for humanity.”  It’s not a group of political official — elected officials.  These are the scientists.

We see here in America, in red states and blue states, extreme weather events costing $145 billion — $145 billion in damages just last year — more powerful and destructive hurricanes and tornadoes. 

I’ve flown over the vast majority of them out west and down in Louisiana, all across America.  It’s a — it’s amazing to see. 

Ravaging hundred-year-old droughts occurring every few years instead of every hundred years.  Wildfires out west that have burned and destroyed more than 5 million acres — everything in its path.  That is more land than the entire state of New Jersey, from New York down to the tip of Delaware.  It’s amazing.  Five million acres.

Our national security is at stake as well.  Extreme weather is already damaging our military installations here in the States.  And our economy is at risk.  So we have to act.

Extreme weather disrupts supply chains, causing delays and shortages for consumers and businesses.

Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world. 

So my message today is this: Since Congress is not acting as it should — and these guys here are, but we’re not getting many Republican votes — this is an emergency.  An emergency.  And I will — I will look at it that way.

I said last week and I’ll say it again loud and clear: As President, I’ll use my executive powers to combat climate — the climate crisis in the absence of congressional actions, notwithstanding their incredible action.  (Applause.) 

In the coming days, my administration will announce the executive actions we have developed to combat this emergency.  We need to act. 

But just take a look around: Right now, 100 million Americans are under heat alert — 100 million Americans.  Ninety communities across America set records for high temperatures just this year, including here in New England as we speak.

And, by the way, records have been set in the Arctic and the Antarctic, with temperatures that are just unbelievable, melting the permafrost.  And it’s astounding the damage that’s being done.

And this crisis impacts every aspect of our everyday life.  That’s why today I’m making the largest investment ever — $2.3 billion — to help communities across the country build infrastructure that is designed to withstand the full range of disasters we’ve been seeing up to today -– extreme heat, drought, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes.

Right now, there are millions of people suffering from extreme heat at home.  So my team is also working with the states to deploy $385 million right now.

For the first time, states will be able to use federal funds to pay for air conditioners in homes, set up community cooling centers in schools where people can get through these extreme heat crises.  And I mean people — and crises that are 100 to 117 degrees.

An Infrastructure Law that your members of Congress have delivered includes $3.1 billion to weatherize homes and make them more energy efficient, which will lower energy cost while keeping America cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and not using too much energy.

And my Department of Labor, led by a guy named Marty Walsh — (said in Boston accent) — he talks funny, but he’s a hell of a guy.  (Applause.)  But all kidding aside, Marty was a great mayor, and I know — I know he knows how to get a job done. 

And he’s doing two things for me:

First of all, as Secretary of Labor, he’s developing the first-ever workplace standards for extreme heat, saying, under these cond- — under these conditions, if it hits this pr- — you cannot do the following — you cannot ask people to do a certain thing.

Second, he’s sending folks out from the Labor Department to make sure we hold workplaces and — to those standards that are being set.  They’ve already completed over 500 heat-related inspections of workplaces across 43 states.  At the end of the day, it’s going to save lives.

Now, let me tell you why we’re here at Brayton Point.  Five years ago, this towering power plant that once stood with cooling towers 500 feet high closed down.  The coal plant at Brayton Point was the largest of its kind in New England — 1,500 megawatts of power, enough to power one in five Massachusetts homes and businesses.

For over 50 years, this plant supported this region’s economy through their electrici- — the electricity they supplied, the good jobs they provided, and the local taxes they paid.

But the plant, like many others around the country, had another legacy: one of toxins, smog, greenhouse gas emissions, the kind of pollution that contributed to the climate emergency we now face today.

Gina McCarthy, a former regulator in Massachusetts, was telling me on the way up how folks used to get a rag out and wipe the gunk off of their car’s windshields in the morning just to be able to drive — not very much unlike where I grew up in a place called Claymont, Delaware — which has more oil refineries than Houston, Texas, had in its region — just across the line in Pennsylvania.  And all the prevailing winds were our way. I just lived up the road.  I just — in an apartment complex when we moved to Delaware.  And just up the road was a little school I went to, Holy Rosary grade school.  And because it was a four-lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us and — rather than us be able to walk. And guess what?  The first frost, you knew what was happening.  You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window.  That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up [with] have cancer and why can- — for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.

But that’s the past, and we’re going to get — we’re going to build a different future with one — one with clean energy, good-paying jobs.

Just 15 years ago, America generated more than half its electricity from coal — coal-fired plants.  Today, that’s down to 20 percent because there’s a big transition happening.

Many of these fossil fuel plants are becoming sites for new clean energy construction.  Others are switching to new, clean technologies.

Look at Brayton Point.  Today, Brayton is one of the frontiers — on the frontier of clean energy in America.  On this site, they’ll manufacture four hun- — 248 miles of high-tech, heavy-duty cables.  Those specialized, subsea cables are necessary to tie offshore wind farms to the existing grid.

Manufacturing these cables will mean good-paying jobs for 250 workers — as many workers as the old plant — power plant had at its peak. 

And the port — (applause) — the port here, 34 feet deep, was used to carry coal into the power plant.  Now we’re going to use that same port to carry components of — for wind power into the sea.

The converter station here and the substation nearby are the assets that move energy across the power lines.

They’ll now move clean electricity generated offshore by the wind — (applause) — enough power to power hundreds of thousands of homes onto the grid — putting old assets to work delivering clean energy.  This didn’t happen by accident.  It happened because we believed and invested in America’s innovation and ingenuity.

One of the companies investing in the factory here joined me at the White House this month.  Vineyard Winds, whose CEO told me about the ground-breaking project labor agreements they’ve negotiated, would create good-paying union jobs.  (Applause.)

And I want to compliment Congressman Bill Keating for his work in this area.

I’m also proud to point out that my administration approved the first commercial project for offshore wind in America, which is being constructed by Vineyard Winds.

Folks, elsewhere in the country, we are pr- — we are propelling retrofits and ensuring that even where fossil fuel plant retires, they still have a role in powering the future.

In Illinois, for example, the state has launched a broad effort to invest in converting old power plants to solar farms, led by Governor Pritzker.

In California, the IBEW members have helped turn a former oil plant into the world’s largest battery storage facility — the world’s largest facility.

In Wyoming, innovators are chosen to — a retiring plant as the next site for the next-generation nuclear plant.

And my administr- — my administration is a partner in that progress, driving federal resources and funding to the communities that have powered this country for generations.  And that’s why they need to be taken care of as well.

I want to thank Cecil Roberts, a friend and President of United Mine Workers of America, and so many other labor leaders who worked with — worked with on these initiatives.

Since I took office, we’ve invested more than $4 billion in federal funding to the 25 hardest-hit coal communities in the country, from West Virginia, to Kentucky, to Wyoming, to New Mexico.

Through the Infrastructure Law, we’re investing in clean hydrogen, nuclear, and carbon capture with the largest grid investment in American history.

We’ve secured $16 billion to clean up abandoned mines and wells, protecting thousands of communities from toxins and waste, particularly methane.  And we still — and we’re going to seal leaking methane pollution — an incredibly power[ful] greenhouse gas that’s 40 times more dangerous to the environment than carbon dioxide.  (Applause.)

And, folks, with American leadership back on climate, I was able to bring more world leaders together than — we got 100 nations together to agree that — at the major conference in Glasgow, England — I mean, Scotland — to change the emissions policies we had.

We’ve made real progress, but there is an enormous task ahead.  We have to keep retaining and recruiting building trades and union electricians for jobs in wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, creating even more and better jobs.

We have to revitalize communities, especially those fence-line communities that are smothered by the legacy of pollution.

We have to outcompete China and in the world, and make these technologies here in the United States — not have to import them.

Folks, when I think about climate change — and I’ve been saying this for three years — I think jobs.  Climate change, I think jobs.  (Applause.)

Almost 100 wind turbines going up off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island with ground broken and work underway.

Jobs manufacturing 2,500-ton steel foundations that anchor these offshore wind farms to the sea’s floor.  Jobs manufacturing a Jones Act vessel in Texas to service these offshore wind farms.

We’re going to make sure that the ocean is open for the clean energy of our future, and everything we can do — give a green light to wind power on the Atlantic coast, where my predecessor’s actions only created confusion.

And today we begin the process to develop wind power in the Gulf of Mexico as well for the first time.  A real opportunity to power millions of additional homes from wind.

Let’s clear the way — let’s clear the way for clean energy and connect these projects to the grid.

I’ve directed my administration to clear every federal hurdle and streamline federal permitting that brings these clean energy projects online right now and right away.  And some of you have already come up and talked to me about that.  (Applause.)  

And while so many governors and mayors have been strong partners in this fight to tackle climate change, we need all governors and mayors.  We need public utility commissioners and state agency heads.  We need electric utilities and developers to stand up and be part of the solution.  Don’t be a road block.  (Applause.)

You all have a duty right now to our economy, to our competitiveness in the world, to the young people in this nation, and to future generations — and that sounds like hyperbole but it’s not; it’s real — to act boldly on climate.

And so does Congress, which — notwithstanding the leadership of the men and women that are here today — has failed in this duty.  Not a single Republican in Congress stepped up to support my climate plan.  Not one. 

So, let me be clear: Climate change is an emergency. 

And in the coming weeks, I’m going to use the power I have as President to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders, and regulatory power that a President possesses.  (Applause.) 

And when it comes to fighting the climate change — climate change, I will not take no for an answer.  I will do everything in my power to clean our air and water, protect our people’s health, to win the clean energy future. 

This, again, sounds like hyperbole, but our children and grandchildren are counting on us.  Not a joke.  Not a joke.  

If we don’t keep it below 1.5 degrees Centigrade, we lose it all.  We don’t get to turn it around.  And the world is counting on us.  And this is the United States of America.  When we put our hearts and minds to it, there’s not a single thing beyond our capacity — I mean it — when we act together. 

And of all things we should be acting together on, it’s climate.  It’s climate.

And, by the way, my dear mother — God rest her soul — used to say, “Joey, out of everything bad, something good will come if you look hard enough.”  Look what’s happening.  We’re going to be able to create as many or more good-paying jobs.  We’re going to make environments where people live safer.  We’re going to make the clean — the air safer.  I really mean it.  We have an opportunity here. 

I’ll bet you when you see what’s happened here in this cable construction here — manufacturing — and you go back and ask all the people who grew up in this beautiful place what they’d rather have: Do they want the plant back with everything it had, or what you’re going to have?  I will be dumbfounded if you find anybody, other than for pure sentimental reasons, saying, “I’d rather have the coal plant.” 

I’ll end by telling you another quick story.  When we moved from Scranton — when coal died in Scranton, everything died in Scranton.  And my dad wasn’t a coal miner.  My — my great — my great-grandfather was a mining engineer.  But my dad was in sales, and there was no work.  So we left to go down to Delaware, where I told you where those oil plants were. 

But I remember driving home — when you take the trolley in Scranton, going out North Washington and Adams Avenues.  Within 15 blocks — we didn’t live in the neighborhood — among the most prestigious neighborhood in the region, in the — in the town where the Scrantons and other good, decent people lived, there was a pla- — you’d go by a wall that — my recollection is it was somewhere between 15 and 18 feet tall.  And it went for the — essentially, a city block. 

And you could see the coal piled up to the very top of the wall from inside.  It was a coal-fired plant.  A coal-fired plant.  And all of that — all of the negative impacts of breathing that coal, the dust were effecting everybody.  But at the time, people didn’t know it and there wasn’t any alternative.

Folks, we have no excuse now.  We know it.  There are answers for it.  We can make things better in terms of jobs.  We can make things better in terms of the environment.  We can make things better for families overall.  So I’m looking forward to this movement. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  (Applause.)  May God bless you all.  And may God protect our troops.  Thank you.  (Applause.)

3:02 P.M. EDT

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What I learned about writing from reading Greta Thunberg’s speech to the U.N.

One way to learn writing strategies is to study the texts of successful speeches. Over the years, I have X-rayed the Gettysburg Address, “I Have a Dream,” and the oratory of both Barack and Michelle Obama. I note, for example, that the former First Lady once reminded her audience that “I live in a house that was built by slaves.” In describing the White House in this manner, she placed the emphatic word — “slaves” — at the end, where it had its best effect.

If a speechwriter had written for her: “Slaves built the house I live in,” Michelle Obama would have been within her rights to hire another.

Oral expression of language precedes the written word by, oh, a gazillion years. And let’s remember that the word “rhetoric,” which can apply to many forms of expression, once emphasized the spoken word — the use of public language by, say, Roman Senators, for the purpose of persuasion.

RELATED STORY: Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race

In fact, the technique of emphatic word order used by Michelle Obama — and Lincoln and MLK Jr. — is encouraged by the Roman educator and rhetorician Quintilian more than 2,000 years ago.

Which brings us to 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist who recently delivered a short speech — about 500 words — to the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City.

I am in no position to judge her scientific evidence. I assume the fact-checkers have been on her trail, with no major corrections in sight. Critics on the right have argued she is a pawn of the left and could not have written such a speech. At least one has gone so far as to disqualify her because she has Asperger’s Syndrome.

Before we get to the speech itself, I would like to debunk the notion that no teenager could have written such a text. It must be, the theory goes, the work of, dare I say it, AN ADULT. She is nothing more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that someone else wrote the speech, or helped her write it. If this is a disqualification, then every politician who has mouthed the words of a clever speechwriter deserves to be un-tongued.

I have taught writers at all levels, including elementary, middle and high school students. The work of the best of these has been superb, worthy of publication. In Haslam’s Book Store here in St. Petersburg, Florida, I stumbled upon a used anthology called “The Best Teen Writing of 2015.” Inside I found the work of winners of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. The work covers several common genres. Here is some of the best nonfiction:

Catherine Gao, 16, San Jose, California:

“A week ago, I sat on a BART car in uncomfortable silence for forty-five minutes. Thirty other strangers sat around me, each diligently doing the exact same thing: nothing. Half stared vacantly at the walls of the car, stopping every few minutes to glance down at their phones. The other half snored gently with their faces smushed against the windows. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear into my seat.”

Maya Lew, 16, New Haven, Connecticut:

“The tornado left everything broken but the toolshed. The townspeople plucked slugs off the side-panels for days afterward, old wood peeling like rotten bananas. River water ripped past the edies of the stream, they fixed torn seams with mud and rocks (double knots, triple knots), pipes from broken undersinks. The sunflowers floated, facedown, river trout half-way to belly-up.”

Jack Tien-Dana, 16, Bronx, New York:

“The next day, the hospital transferred my mom to a New York hospital. My father rode with her in the ambulance, while my aunt, a semi-famous fashion editor and full-fledged diva, drove me home with my uncle and cousin. We were on the Westside Highway when she rear-ended a cab. I was holding a full canister of cheese puffs, which jounced in the air and landed all over me. She flew out of the car to excoriate the cabbie (note: she rear-ended him) and, during a lull in the ensuing fracas, she stuck her head in my window and hissed at a cheese-dusted me, ‘Don’t tell your mother this happened.'”

I have chosen three teen writers who were 16 years old, the same age as Greta Thunberg. I don’t know their backstory, but my guess is that they have had adults in their lives who encouraged them, from an early age, to perform the three main behaviors that mark a literate person: to read critically, write purposefully and speak about how meaning is created through reading and writing.

Greta Thunberg clearly has the same gifts, magnified by her ability as a young person to speak to large groups of adults when the stakes are very high. Let’s stipulate that a speech at the United Nations is a step up from nailing that college admissions essay.

So let’s see how she did, and what she did. (My commentary appears in parenthesis.)

Transcript: Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday.

My message is that we’ll be watching you.

(In syntax we talk about the “number” and “person” of pronouns. Each designation contributes to the voice of the speaker. In eight words, we get three of them. “My” indicates first person singular, showing that the author seizes ownership of these ideas. “We” is first-person plural, used collectively as in the language of labor union messages, but also “We the people.” She is not alone. Her last word is the second-person plural “you.” In most cases, this creates the illusion of discourse, the “I” and the “Thou.” But as the object of the verb “watching” it feels more ominous here. It’s not Big Brother who is watching. But Little Sister.)

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!

(Short sentences have the feeling of gospel truth. Here we get a series of them. She will not let her audience off the hook with a long flowing sentence. Each period is like a hammer pounded on the podium. The audience cannot see the exclamation mark at the end of this paragraph, but they can hear it. I found “How dare you!” uncomfortable to read and hear. I identified, guiltily, with the failed grownups in the audience. Her language is that of an angry parent or a stern school teacher scolding a child. That inversion of expectation defines her voice.)

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. 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!

(Repetition — as opposed to redundancy — is purposeful, and among the most common rhetorical tools available for speakers. “That a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.” Greta Thunberg stabs us with another “How dare you.” Notice another strategy: Quintilian warned speakers not to let their best words and phrases get lost in the middle of sentences and paragraphs. When you can, put them at the end. Notice: empty words, lucky ones, suffering, dying, collapsing, fairy tales of eternal economic growth.)

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.

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.

(Notice an ancient rhetorical technique at work here. I don’t have a name for it. But we all use it in our personal and professional lives. I might call it “saying it by saying you are not saying it.” As in, “Now I am not saying that professional athletes don’t deserve the money they make.” Well, yes I am. Remember Antony in Julius Caesar: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I’ve come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Yeah, right! Here the author says, “… then you would be evil.” Then she takes it back, “And that I refuse to believe.” She delivers the sting, and takes it back, because who is inclined to agree with a person who calls them evil?)

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees (Celsius), and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise — the best odds given by the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) — the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on January 1 st , 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just “business as usual” and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remained CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 ½ years.

(Some people with Asperger’s are known to have advanced spatial reasoning skills, making them good at things like math, architecture and music. This played out in the novel and theater play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.” So it would not surprise me if the technical evidence here is accurate, something that could be mastered by a teen. I believe it, not because of any knowledge I bring to the reading, but because it has the ring of truth, and I assume it would have been vetted by experts. Let me stipulate, though, that while numbers can be used effectively in a speech [“Four score and seven years ago …”] they are best used sparingly. I remember that the Good Samaritan, in the parable of Jesus, gave the innkeeper “two denarii” — silver coins, a day’s wage — to take care of the fallen man.)

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

(Wow. We are back to being scolded by a child, using the inversion that we are not mature enough. I hope she doesn’t ground me.)

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.

(As with other effective speeches, it opens strong, takes care of business in the middle, and closes with the greatest hope, or here, the strongest indictment. Look at the language: failing us, betrayal, never forgive you.)

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

(Notice the sentence length in the last two paragraphs: 4 words, 10, 9, 9, 5, 9, 10, 5, 10. All those periods are stop signs, slowing down the pace for dramatic effect.)

(Never has a thank you and its courtesy sounded in such friction with the message delivered.)

Roy Peter Clark is senior faculty emeritus at Poynter. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Comments are closed.

I’m an admirer of anyone who cares enough to trace the history of rhetoric back to the Romans. Just one note: The link in the story doesn’t go to the Thunberg speech you refer to. That will be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAJsdgTPJpU

I’d settle for “She has a brilliant speechwriter.”

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Surging seas are coming for us all, warns UN chief

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said that big polluters have a clear responsibility to cut emissions – or risk a worldwide catastrophe.

“The Pacific is today the most vulnerable area of the world,” he told the BBC at the Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga. “There is an enormous injustice in relation to the Pacific and it’s the reason I am here.”

“The small islands don’t contribute to climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is multiplied here.”

But eventually the "surging seas are coming for us all," he warned in a speech at the forum, as the UN releases two separate reports on rising sea levels and how they threaten Pacific island nations.

The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in the South West Pacific report says this region faces a triple whammy of an accelerating rise in the sea level, a warming of the ocean and acidification – a rise in the sea’s acidity because it’s absorbing more and more carbon dioxide.

“The reason is clear: greenhouse gases – overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our planet,” Mr Guterres said in a speech at the forum.

“The sea is taking the heat – literally.”

This year’s theme - transformative resilience – was tested on the opening day when the new auditorium was deluged by heavy rains and buildings evacuated because of an earthquake.

"It's such a stark reminder of how volatile things are within our region, and how important it is that we need to prepare for everything," Joseph Sikulu, Pacific director at 350, a climate change advocacy group, told the BBC.

Not far from the venue was a street parade, with dancers representing the region, including Torres Strait islanders, Tongans and Samoans. At the start of the parade, a big banner reads: "We are not drowning, we are fighting". Another says: "Sea levels are rising – so are we".

It echoes a challenge that threatens to wipe out their world - the UN Climate Action Team released a report called "Surging Seas in a Warming World" showing that global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years.

According to the report, the levels have risen an average of 9.4cm (3.7in) in the past 30 years but in the tropical Pacific, that figure was as high as 15cm.

"It's important for leaders, especially like Australia and Aotearoa, to come and witness these things for themselves, but also witness the resilience of our people," Mr Sikulu said.

"A core part of Tongan culture is our ability to be able to continue to be joyful throughout our adversity, and that's how we practise our resilience and to see and witness that, I think is going to be important."

This is the second time Secretary-General Guterres has participated in the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. The annual meeting brings together leaders from 18 Pacific Islands, including Australia and New Zealand.

As leaders convened for the official opening ceremony, heavy rain caused extensive flooding. Shortly afterwards, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the Tonga region, highlighting just how vulnerable it is.

In 2019, Mr Guterres travelled to Tuvalu where he sounded the alarm about rising sea levels. Five years on, he says he has seen real changes.

“We see everywhere an enormous commitment to resist, a commitment to reduce the negative impact of climate change,” he told the BBC. “The problem is, the Pacific Islands also suffer another big injustice - the international financial instruments that exist to support countries in distress were not designed for countries like this.”

Mr Guterres on Monday visited local communities whose livelihoods are threatened by rising sea levels. They’ve been waiting for seven years for a decision to be made on the funding of a sea wall.

“The bureaucracy, the complexity, the lack of sense of urgency because it’s a small island, far away,” he said, citing the failings of the international financial system, especially when it comes to small, developing island states.

“There are promises of increases of money available for adaptation in developing countries but the truth is we are far from what is needed, from the solidarity that is needed for these countries to be able to exist.”

Many Pacific islanders here at the conference single out the biggest regional donor and emitter - Australia.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would be ramping up its extraction and use of gas until “2050 and beyond,” despite calls to phase out fossil fuels.

“There is an essential responsibility of the big polluters,” Mr Guterres said, when asked by the BBC what message he has for regional emitters like Australia.

Without that, the world will breach the threshold of 1.5C that was established in the Paris Agreement in 2015. That agreement aims to limit global warming to "well below" 2C by the end of the century, and "pursue efforts" to keep warming within the safer limit of 1.5C.

“Only by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius do we have a fighting chance of preventing the irreversible collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets – and the catastrophes that accompany them,” Mr Guterres said.

“That means cutting global emissions 43% compared to 2019 levels by 2030, and 60% by 2035.”

Last year though, global emissions rose 1%.

“There is an obligation of the G20 that represent 80% of emissions – there’s an obligation for them to come together, to guarantee a reduction of emissions now," Mr Guterres said.

Singling out the G20 as well as companies who contribute to much of the world's global emissions, he added: "They have a clear responsibility to reverse the current trend. It’s time to say 'enough'."

Pacific Islands urge unity in face of China ambition

Australia offers climate refuge to tuvalu citizens.

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Map Reveals US World Heritage Sites 'Most at Risk'

A recent analysis has identified some of the world's most iconic UNESCO World Heritage Sites as being at significant risk from climate-related threats, including 21 in the United States.

Conducted by climate risk analytics firm Climate X, the report highlights the vulnerability of 500 UNESCO sites worldwide, with a focus on those most at risk by 2050 if urgent action is not taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the analysis, the Everglades National Park in Florida is the most threatened site in the United States, facing a range of climate hazards, including coastal flooding, tropical cyclones, extreme heat, drought and storm surges.

Washington's Olympic National Park is also among the top 50 most at-risk sites because of the dangers posed by river and surface flooding, as well as landslides.

"The potential impact of climate change on these sites is profound. But it's not just our past heritage that's at risk—it's our present, too," Lukky Ahmed, CEO and co-founder of Climate X, said in a statement.

Globally, the Sansa, a collection of ancient Buddhist mountain monasteries on the Korean Peninsula, topped the list of sites most vulnerable to climate change. The report identified river and surface flooding as the primary threats to these monasteries, some of which date back to the seventh century.

Other high-risk sites include Australia's Sydney Opera House, Indonesia's Cultural Landscape of Bali, China's West Lake Cultural Landscape in Hangzhou and Norway's West Norwegian Fjords

"While the loss of these cultural treasures—many of which have endured for millennia—would of course be devastating, it's also vital to remember the real societal and economic impact of climate change is happening in the here and now," Ahmed said.

Climate X's co-founder, Kamil Kluza, echoed the urgency of the situation, telling Newsweek: "I think the message is that the risks are there and they need to be actively worked upon.

"That means investment budgets and putting money on the side for both climate adaptation as well as reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

The report was generated using Climate X's Spectra platform, which uses advanced algorithms to model the future likelihood of 16 different climate hazards—including extreme heat, tropical cyclones, and flooding—across eight warming scenarios over a 100-year horizon.

Each site was assigned a risk score, ranging from A (no risk) to F (high risk), based on the projected total loss percentages.

Sites in Africa, the Middle East and Latin American countries were excluded from the analysis as Climate X doesn't have coverage in these regions yet. Other sites excluded were based on an assessment that they had zero risk.

In total, UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—recognizes 1,223 world heritage sites, spanning the entire globe.

The U.S. is home to 26 world heritage sites, including both the Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks .

In response to the report, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre clarified to Newsweek that the organization was not involved in the analysis and has no information about the methodology employed.

"UNESCO is not in a position to comment on it at this stage," the Centre stated.

Ahmed concluded by calling on governments, preservationists, and the global community to prioritize the protection of these sites.

"Our findings serve as a stark warning for governments, preservationists and the global community to prioritize the safeguarding of our planet—to preserve our ancient monuments and our current assets and infrastructure—and to protect life today and into the future," he said

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about climate change? Let us know via [email protected].

About the writer

Tom Howarth is a Newsweek reporter based in Bristol, U.K. His focus is reporting on nature and science. He covers climate change, biodiversity, extreme weather, zoonotic diseases and more. Tom joined Newsweek in August 2024 from BBC Science Focus and has previously worked at the European Southern Observatory. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a master's degree in advanced chemical engineering. You can get in touch with Tom by emailing [email protected] . Languages: English.

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Un headquarters, 27 july 2023, secretary-general's opening remarks at press conference on climate, antónio guterres.

The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived. Leaders must lead. No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first. There is simply no more time for that. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the very worst of climate change. But only with dramatic, immediate climate action. 

A very good morning.   Humanity is in the hotseat.       Today, the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service are releasing official data that confirms that July 2023 is set to be the hottest month ever recorded in human history. 

We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this.  Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board.

According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded; the three hottest days on record; and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of year.    The consequences are clear and they are tragic: children swept away by monsoon rains; families running from the flames; workers collapsing in scorching heat.   For vast parts of North America, Asia, Africa and Europe – it is a cruel summer.   For the entire planet, it is a disaster. 

And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame. 

All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings.

The only surprise is the speed of the change.

Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.

The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived. 

The air is unbreathable.  The heat is unbearable.  And the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable.

Leaders must lead.    No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first.   There is simply no more time for that.   It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the very worst of climate change.   But only with dramatic, immediate climate action.   We have seen some progress.  A robust rollout of renewables.  Some positive steps from sectors such as shipping.    But none of this is going far enough or fast enough.   Accelerating temperatures demand accelerated action.    We have several critical opportunities ahead.    The Africa Climate Summit.  The G20 Summit.  The UN Climate Ambition Summit.  COP28.   But leaders – and particularly G20 countries responsible for 80% of global emissions – must step up for climate action and climate justice.   What does that mean in practice?   First, emissions.   We need ambitious new national emissions reduction targets from G20 members.   And we need all countries to take action in line with my Climate Solidarity Pact and Acceleration Agenda:   Hitting fast forward so that developed countries commit to reach net zero emissions as close as possible to 2040, and emerging economies as close as possible to 2050, with support from developed countries to do so.    And all actors must come together to accelerate a just and equitable transition from fossil fuels to renewables -- as we stop oil and gas expansion, and funding and licensing for new coal, oil and gas.   Credible plans must also be presented to exit coal by 2030 for OECD countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.    Ambitious renewable energy goals must be in line with the 1.5 degree limit.   And we must reach net zero electricity by 2035 in developed countries and 2040 elsewhere, as we work to bring affordable electricity to everyone on earth.   We also need action from leaders beyond governments.   I urge companies as well as cities, regions, and financial institutions to come to the Climate Ambition Summit with credible transition plans that are fully aligned with the United Nations’ net zero standard, presented by our High-Level Expert Group.    Financial institutions must end their fossil fuel lending, underwriting and investments and shift to renewables instead.    And fossil fuel companies must chart their move towards clean energy, with detailed transition plans across the entire value chain:   No more greenwashing.  No more deception.  And no more abusive distortion of anti-trust laws to sabotage net zero alliances.   Second, adaptation.   Extreme weather is becoming the new normal.    All countries must respond and protect their people from the searing heat, fatal floods, storms, droughts, and raging fires that result.   Those countries on the frontlines -- who have done the least to cause the crisis and have the least resources to deal with it -- must have the support they need to do so.    It is time for a global surge in adaptation investment to save millions of lives from climate [carnage.]   That requires unprecedented coordination around the priorities and plans of vulnerable developing countries.   Developed countries must present a clear and credible roadmap to double adaptation finance by 2025 as a first step towards devoting at least half of all climate finance to adaptation.   Every person on earth must be covered by an early warning system by 2027 – by implementing the Action Plan we launched last year.   And countries should consider a set of global goals to mobilize international action and support on adaptation.   That leads to the third area for accelerated action – finance.   Promises made on international climate finance must be promises kept.   Developed countries must honour their commitments to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries for climate support and fully replenish the Green Climate Fund.   I am concerned that only two G7 countries – Canada and Germany – have made until now replenishment pledges.   Countries must also operationalize the loss and damage fund at COP28 this year. No more delays; no more excuses.   More broadly, many banks, investors and other financial actors continue to reward polluters and incentivize wrecking the planet.   We need a course correction in the global financial system so that it supports accelerated climate action.    That includes putting a price on carbon and pushing the multilateral development banks to overhaul their business models and approaches to risk.   We need the multilateral development banks leveraging their funds to mobilize much more private finance at reasonable cost to developing countries -- and scaling up their funding to renewables, adaptation and loss and damage.   In all these areas, we need governments, civil society, business and others working in partnership to deliver.   I look forward to welcoming first-movers and doers on the Acceleration Agenda to New York for the Climate Ambition Summit in September.    And to hearing how leaders will respond to the facts before us. This is the price of entry.   The evidence is everywhere: humanity has unleashed destruction.   This must not inspire despair, but action.   We can still stop the worst.   But to do so we must turn a year of burning heat into a year of burning ambition.   And accelerate climate action – now.   Enfin, Permettez-moi de dire quelques mots sur la situation profondément préoccupante au Niger. Allow me to say a few words about the deeply worrying situation in Niger.     Soyons clairs : Let me be clear:     Les Nations unies condamnent fermement cette attaque contre le gouvernement démocratiquement élu – et soutiennent les efforts de la CEDEAO et de l'Union africaine pour restaurer la démocratie. The United Nations strongly condemns the assault against the democratically-elected government and supports the efforts of ECOWAS and the African Union to restore democracy.   Hier, j'ai parlé au président Bazoum pour lui exprimer toute notre solidarité. Yesterday I spoke to President Bazoum to express our full solidarity,     Aujourd'hui, je souhaite m'adresser directement à ceux qui le retiennent : Now I want to speak directly to those detaining him:     Libérez Président Bazoum – immédiatement et sans condition. Release President Bazoum immediately and unconditionally.   Cessez d'entraver la gouvernance démocratique de votre pays, et respectez l’État de droit. Stop obstructing the democratic governance of the country and respect the rule of law.   Nous voyons une tendance inquiétante dans la région du Sahel.  Les changements anticonstitutionnels et successifs de gouvernement ont des effets terribles sur le développement et la vie des populations civiles. We are seeing a disturbing trend in the region.  Successive unconstitutional changes of government are having terrible effects on the development and lives of civilian populations.   C’est particulièrement criant dans les pays déjà touchés par les conflits, l'extrémisme violent, le terrorisme et les effets dévastateurs du changement climatique. This is particularly glaring in countries already affected by conflict, violent extremism and terrorism, as well as the devastating effects of climate change.            Les Nations unies sont solidaires du gouvernement démocratiquement élu et du peuple nigérien. The United Nations stands in solidarity with the democratically elected Government and the people of Niger. 

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Harnessing the Power of AI for Climate Change Impact Assessment

UNU Report on how AI can bridge the digital divide and support climate action in Global South nations.

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Obringer, R., Kumar, R. and Madani, K. (2024). Harnessing the Power of AI for Climate Change Impact Assessment, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, ISBN: 978-92-808-6120-4 , DOI: 10.53328/INR24ROR012  

Download the report

Climate change impact assessment is critical for creating adequate climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and plans. Critical infrastructure systems (e.g., water and energy systems) are particularly at risk for climate change impacts. In fact, a better understanding of climate change impacts on the water and energy systems would facilitate the fulfillment of SDG2 (end hunger), SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 13 (climate action), with many indirect benefits across many other areas. Nonetheless, conducting climate change impact assessment, particularly at the community-level, is not an easy task. Often, the impact assessment models require access to substantial computational resources to run the complex models, as well as the expertise to work with those models and interpret their results, which may not be possible for all communities. As such, there is a need to expand climate change impact assessment to include more accessible models that can handle high-resolution, local data that is of interest to communities. Here, we highlight how climate impact assessment studies can benefit from the power of artificial intelligence (AI). The report details the use of AI model to conduct a computationally efficient climate change impact assessment. This model is applied to a case study across the United States of America (U.S.) as an example to showcase the insights it generates in real-world applications. To demonstrate this process, the study will focus on the impacts on coupled water and electricity demand (e.g., the water-electricity demand nexus). To conduct the impact assessment, the report demonstrates two different means of collecting future climate data—Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) Earth System Models (ESMs) and contemporary climate analogs. Our results show significant increases across the Midwestern U.S. when using ESM-derived data. Similar results were found through the climate analog-derived data, suggesting that the analogs can be used successfully as proxies for traditional ESM data in communities that might not have access to the larger CMIP suite of models. Understanding the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure is important for building sustainable and equitable policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These infrastructure systems are often interconnected (e.g., the water-energy nexus) and managed by local entities. Thus, while climate change is a global problem requiring cooperation across countries and sectors, many solutions require local action. In this sense, the results presented here can be used to deepen our scientific understanding of climate change impacts on the water-energy nexus, as well as develop novel methodologies that integrate AI with traditional climate change impact assessment to better prepare local communities for the future.

Read the press release here

Photo credit (cover page): Images were generated by Generative Artificial Intelligence.  

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