Greta Thunberg, Activists Say Response To Covid-19 Proves Leaders ‘Never Once’ Treated Climate Change As Crisis

Greta Thunberg and other climate activists sent an open letter signed by thousands of activists, scientists and celebrities Thursday to European Union and global leaders arguing for radical action on climate change akin to the emergency response to Covid-19, blasting their leadership and arguing that current climate change proposals suggest “they have given up without even trying.

The “Face the Climate Emergency” letter, written by Thunberg and climate activists Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adélaïde Charlier, argues that the response to the Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear that “the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis.”

The letter, which comes ahead of a European Council summit on Friday, slams current EU climate change proposals like achieving net zero emissions by 2050 as not “even close to enough,” and activists argue that the EU, and the world in general, needs a “new system” that does not “inherently [fuel] the climate crisis.”

Activists set out a range of “first steps” that are “essential to our chance of avoiding a climate- and ecological disaster,” including ending investments in fossil fuels, establishing stronger carbon budgets, making “ecocide an international crime” and designing “climate policies that protect workers and the most vulnerable and reduce all forms of inequality: economic, racial and gender.”

“We need to end the ongoing wrecking, exploitation and destruction of our life supporting systems and move towards a fully decarbonised economy that centres around the wellbeing of all people as well as the natural world,” activists write.

The letter has been signed by hundreds of scientists and thousands of citizens and activists, along with Greenpeace, PETA and such celebrities and major figures as Malala Yousafzai, Leonardo DiCaprio, Coldplay, Björk, Jane Fonda, Margaret Atwood, Ben Stiller and Priyanka Chopra...MORE