Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/23/greta-thunbergspeech-un-2019-address Please see link above for original text and videos, embedded hotlinks and comments
Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders in emotional speech at UN September 23, 2019 •
Thunberg, 16, says governments have betrayed young people
•
‘You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us’ VIDEO - Greta Thunberg message to the United Nations Climate Summary 2019 on fossil fuels and man-made global warming. Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating. If world leaders choose to fail us, my generation will never forgive them Greta Thunberg
Read more In a stinging speech on Monday, the teenage Swedish climate activist told governments that “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.” Days after millions of young people joined protests worldwide to demand emergency action on climate change, leaders gathered for the annual United Nations general assembly aiming to inject fresh momentum into efforts to curb carbon emissions. 1
But Thunberg predicted the summit would not deliver any new plans in line with the radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are needed to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” a visibly emotional Thunberg said. “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.” As the summit spooled through about 60 speeches from national representatives, it became clear that Thunberg’s forecast was prescient. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, told delegates that “the time for talking is over” in announcing a plan to ramp up renewable energy but didn’t announce any phase-out of coal – a key goal set by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general who convened the summit. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, did set out the end of coalmining in her country but only by 2038 – a lengthy timeframe that disappointed environmentalists. Meanwhile, China declined to put forward any new measures to tackle the climate crisis. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for the European Union to deepen its emissions cuts and said that France would not make trade deals with countries not signed up tor the landmark Paris climate agreement. “We cannot allow our youth to strike every Friday without action,” Macron said, in reference to Friday’s global climate strikes. Despite Guterres’ efforts, the summit was somewhat overshadowed by its absentees – most notably the US, and Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, whose representatives were reportedly not selected to make a presentation there because of Brazil’s failure to outline plans to strengthen its efforts to counter climate change. Donald Trump did visit the UN on Monday but only briefly dipped into the climate summit to see Modi’s speech before attending a meeting which he had called on religious freedom. As he arrived at the UN, Trump crossed paths with Thunberg, who fixed the president with a hard stare. The summit was designed to accelerate countries’ ambition to address the climate crisis amid increasingly urgent warnings by scientists. A new UN analysis has found that commitments to cut planet-warming gases must be at least tripled and increased by up to fivefold if the world is to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement of holding the temperature rise to at least 2C above the pre-industrial era.
2
The world is currently on track to warm by as much as 3.4C by the end of the century, the UN warned, a situation that would escalate disastrous heatwaves, flooding, droughts and societal unrest. Major coral reefs and many other species face extinction. “There’s a big dissonance between every leader saying to Greta ‘we hear you’ and the commitments they are putting on to the table,” said Isabel Cavelier, a former climate negotiator for Colombia who is now senior adviser at the Mission 2020 climate group. “China said absolutely nothing new, India mentioned commitments made in the past, the US, Canada and Australia aren’t here. We are seeing governments showing up empty-handed. There’s a feeling that the big emitters are holding things back.” There were a few signs of progress. A group of nearly 90 large companies promised to reach net zero emissions by 2050, while a handful of countries said they will be winding down coal use. But it became apparent that most of the ambition was coming from developing countries, rather than the major polluters. Trump has vowed to pull the US out of the Paris agreement, while other major powers are wary of making further commitments ahead of key UN climate talks in Glasgow next year. Thunberg’s speech was “very emotional and grounded in science”, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If I were a world leader I’d feel very uncomfortable. But we’ve seen nothing from the big national leaders, the G20 players. It’s hard to say the summit moved the needle on the emissions curve.” “Other countries must follow our lead,” said Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, a country situated on coral atolls in the Pacific that is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise. “Falling short will represent the greatest failure humanity has ever seen. The summit must be the moment we choose survival over selfishness.” But delegates at the summit warned that the international effort to stave off dangerous global heating was being undermined by a wave of nationalism. “If you look at the US and Brazil, it’s a result of populist politics that is turning its back on the climate,” said Cavelier. “That needs to be made explicit and isolated from the world.” Amid the stunning rise of the youth climate movement, Thunberg, who arrived in the US last month on a solar-powered yacht, has directly castigated Congress and leaders at the UN, as well as spearhead the largest ever climate protest last week. On Monday she joined 14 other children to lodge a formal complaint under the UN convention on the rights of the child. The complainants, from countries including Argentina, the Marshall Islands, France, Germany and the US, claim that countries’ failure to address the climate crisis violates the international convention. “Each one of us had our rights violated and denied, our futures are being destroyed,” said Alexandria Villaseñor, a 14-year-old from New York who has taken to protesting outside the UN headquarters every Friday. 3
Thunberg said that world leaders were endangering children by ignoring climate breakdown. “They promised to protect the rights of the child and they have not done this,” she said at a media conference at the offices of Unicef. “The message is that we have had enough.”
Comments by scientists and engineers working for sound global planning for reliable energy using fossil fuels, hydro-electric and nuclear power
Kelvin Kemm, Nuclear Scientist – South Africa She keeps looking at her speech, I wonder who wrote it. This time we have only 8.5 years left. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is a quote by a past major political figure:“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf Here is another quote by him: “The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” What followed this was; squads of Brown Shirts marching with banners; emotional speeches to the masses; large emotional gatherings with torches and banners; marching; persecution of anyone who disagreed...etc The green campaign looks very similar does it not? The Greta crowd with banners and costumes; marching; emotional messages; Greta and others hailed as saviours of the masses. Hopefully the sheer madness of the Greta-type mania is causing many thinking people to actually think. I believe that we are already seeing this in that more sensible people are able to say in public that they cannot agree with the Greta approach. From this they can doubt the fundamentals and then the message. I think that Donald T and Boris J are wanting to repudiate AGW climate change completely, but can’t politically do it until there is more public support. They have to sow seed into fertile ground, politically speaking. So people like us have to keep supplying information in language that they could use in a speech. We have to produce visual-type analogies that are instantly understandable but 4
which are scientifically accurate. The greens do this with pictures of a polar bear balancing on a tiny floating chunk of ice. That works, but is a misguided image. They also show pictures like one nuclear reactor compared to a pictures of half a dozen wind turbines and ask “Which would you prefer?” They don’t show the reactor and 3000 to 5000 turbines ... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Some fun stuff from Myron Ebell - Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Ecopocalyptic Predictions. Who remembers Maurice Strong, the 'Boss Man' of the original Earth Day in Rio in 1992?
Bruno Comby, Founder-President of Environmentalists for Nuclear, International - France Never underestimate your enemy. We are facing real problems. In France and much of Europe, although rightist parties tend to rise, the socialist ideology, calling for restrictions to individual liberties in the name of collective good, and calling for endless additional taxes although we already have the highest taxes in the world, is still a widespread underlying ideology throughout Europe. It is the same people and the same ideology that promotes simplistic (and false) ideas in the area of energy and climate. Such as “wind and solar are free, abundant and will solve all energy problems” or “nuclear energy is bad, generates cancer and is undemocratic” and simplistic climatic views such as “CO2 is a poison” or “renewables will save the climate”. Socialism has been recently in government in many European countries or still is to a large extent (including in France). For example, Jean-Yves Le Drian, our current Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Emmanuel Macron, our President, identified themselves as socialists until 2017 (same for almost half of our government). That was 5
less than 3 years ago. In such a world, Greta is a heroine saving the planet like Jeanne d’Arc saved France. The basic problem is that only a small minority of the population (that includes all those on this list, but we should be aware we are a small minority) is intelligent enough to understand correctly the basics of energy and climate questions. In a democracy, a small minority’s thinking (even if it is correct) will always lose. In a world where a majority of teenagers drink Coca Cola daily and smoke haschich at some point to some extent, mental perceptions are somewhat distorted. In such a world, socialism, and other distorted ideologies can easily become very popular, Greta is a heroine, and the “truth” about the climate or the “best solution” for energy (nuclear) even if we are fundamentally right, can be very difficult to popularise if it is only a minority’s thinking. Education is the key. But it takes a long, long time, at least one, if not 2 or more generations. The worst of all enemies is ignorance and distorted thinking processes. As for Greta in French we say : “au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois” which could be translated by “in a world unable to see the light, the Queen is a blind girl”. Just replace “unable to see the light” by “distorted thinking” and “blind girl” by “autistic girl” and you have a fairly clear description of the situation. The (very big) problem is that Greta, although she is young, autistic, neurologically ill, manipulated by her parents and by leftist/socialist/green groups, completely uneducated about energy and climate matters, is perceived as an omni-knowledgeable Queen who can intuitively guide us and our children (who cares about science? certainly not a majority of the young generation) towards a better future. Popular ignorance and flawed but popular ideologies are a real, very serious problem. We should always remain optimistic and move forward but there’s no easy solution and just “speaking the truth” is probably not enough - as we can see. In the end the truth always wins (even communism fell), but it can take sometimes one or several generations. After the Russian revolution, it took more than 70 years to break the mirage of communism. Since the French revolution in 1789, France to a large extent still lives with the unrealistic dream of some sort of socialism “everybody is (or should be) equally rich and 6
powerful”. In such a world, thinking that “any energy can do the job” and “a dilute energy like wind and solar is just as good (if not better) as a powerful (therefore dangerous) source of energy” (like nuclear energy) is a sort of underlying consequence of a simplistic thinking process that is deeply embedded in our western culture based on democracy and is very popular. In a democratic system, popular mis-thinking cannot be easily unrooted. We have still some work to do ! And we should remain optimistic because in the end the truth always wins (as in any good American movie)...
The climate in France is beautiful with fluctuations in the range of the past. Country living is relaxing and fun. 7
The French planning for continuous nuclear power is unmatched in the world. Here Nuclear Power Station Penly with two original operating plants and two sites reserved for replacement plants at end of life of the first set. Exceptional nuclear power planning and operations that needs to be copied around the world.
Vijay Raj Jayaraj, Environmental Scientist and writer about government, energy and environment - India
I have multiple articles on her: 1. https://stream.org/whose-business-is-it-anyway-when-i-got-climate-bullied-on-twitter/ 2. https://clashdaily.com/2019/08/gretas-yacht-ride-across-the-atlantic-and-thehypocrisy-of-climate-alarmists/
8
Bonne Posma, Physicist – USA
Thank you for the link to the UN speech made by that poor, gullible, misguided girl. As a response, here is a brief compilation on some excellent material from Heartland regarding the insignificance of man-made CO2 to climate. The four pages of graphic information in the link above is all anyone needs to know to ignore Greta and focusing on important real problems facing the world. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation It is simply extraordinary that the world's attention has been captured by a 16-year-old child who knows diddly squat about the science of climate and the science, engineering, and economics of energy production, distribution, and consumption. The best explanation I can think of for it---as for the whole scare about CAGW---is expressed in the title of Charles MacKay's classic study Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Someday, perhaps a century from now, historians of sociology, psychology, and politics will present this to their students as an example of popular manias Eric Jelinski, nuclear engineer, chemical engineer, mechanical engineer, university lecturer, farmer – Canada Of course, she is just a robot doll whose travel and lodging costs are probably covered by some deep pockets whose sole purpose is to create chaos in the western world…the same people who were paid by Trudeau, or who paid Trudeau and the Clintons and the Obama to fight against Trump, eg. to demonstrate against building the Transmountain pipeline that he later purchased from Kinder Morgan using $4.5 billion of Canadian taxpayer money. That pipeline was shovel ready. On our Oct 21’st election day, I expect Canadians will give trudeau the shovel. Where is all the money for social unrest coming from….look up Tides Foundation and ‘radical environmentalism’, https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/georgesoros/ That those people like Greta are like our own minister of the environment, McKenna, denying the data and practicing hypocrisy,
9
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/19/goldstein-feds-scrapped-100-years-of-dataon-climate-change/ They travel around on planes, and cars built with oil, fuelled by oil, and wearing clothes made with oil. I have a little essay here. Please feel free to copy and resend. let's be clear about oil. Oil came from dead trees and exists in the ground in rock (shale) or sand (Oil Sands). Nobody has ever complained about the oil that is in the ground, but some people are pure bullshit hypocrites when they protest against oil, especially those college boys and girls who have forgotten that their latte cup has a plastic liner and lid made from oil, their fancy nylon shirts and blouses and shoes are made from oil, even the money they spend is printed on sheets made from oil. Their contemporary furniture is made from sawdust glues together with glue that is made from oil, and so are their carpets made from oil. In case they go camping, their tents, tentpoles, mattress and any ropes they use are made from oil. They drive in their upscale SUV’s using oil, fly to vacation spots, or fly in to where they protest in airplanes that use oil, sitting in seats made from oil, and kept safe by seatbelts made from oil (Kevlar). The fancy bedsheets are made from oil. Their spandex yoga panties are made from oil, and finally, condoms are also made from oil. David Wojick, Civil Engineer, Research writer about government, energy and the environment - USA It is not Greta that has captured the world's attention, rather it is the massive youth movement she is said to have spawned, which deserves the world's attention. That their ignorance is deep is not all at surprising. They have been captured by a few simple slogans, Venice appear on their signs. Reading around today I repeatedly encountered the statement that science says we must cut CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 to avoid catastrophe. This is a perversion of the Oct IPCC SR1.5 report, which says no such thing. It says that is what we must do (based on AGW science) to hold future warming to less than 0.5 degrees C. But there is no claim that this is somehow a threshold to catastrophe. In fact it also says what the damages would supposedly be with an additional 1.0 degrees of warming instead and they are not that much greater. I discuss this here: https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/18/is-the-climate-crisis-a-cruelhoax-or-tragic-blunder/ If a million people march that is very real. That they are completely ignorant is sad, but not terribly surprising. Mass movements tend to be like that.
10
John Shanahan, Civil Engineer, USA: In the article in The Guardian quoted at the beginning of this essay, Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists says that Greta Thunberg’s speech is grounded in science. Thunberg’s speech was “very emotional and grounded in science”, said Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. This says a lot about the science used by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Greta’s speech contains no science. It is all emotional generalizations with effective eye movement and body language designed to rev up and panic the public. See results in photo below. It is working.
Who are leaders of industry, government, and non-profit organizations who support this Swedish youth? Who else in history has given speeches like she does?
An angry American child and laughing adult handlers protesting use of fossil fuels. 11
What will become of North America, Europe, Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, if the Pope and government leaders back this very angry Swedish truant schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg? Without fossil fuels, a near powerless free world would turn back to many backwater hamlets, losing billions of lives and all semblances of the modern world. The surviving millions would flee to the countryside, like in the Middle Ages. Without fossil fuels and nuclear power, the free world will succumb to its enemies in a new kind of war without bombs and bullets destroying cities and infrastructure. Instead of “Silent Spring,” there would be “Silent Armageddon.” This ultimate conflict started in the 1950s with the fear mongering of the Linear No-Threshold Model and Collective Dose guidance for radiation risk, then the uprising of the extreme environmental movement and anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear power protests ever since. Democracy, capitalism, freedom must defend their energy sources and infrastructure. It is essential that we prevail. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are the best energy sources there are. Don’t let Greta Thunberg and her Fridays For Future Children’s Crusade, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Helen Caldicott and others like them take fossil fuels and nuclear power away.
12