By Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Hoping the world takes heed of Monday’s dire report by the U.N. climate panel, activist Greta Thunberg said she plans to go to this year’s global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, after all.
Thunberg had said she would skip the major U.N. conference in November out of concern that the uneven rollout of COVID-19 vaccines across the world would leave some countries unable to attend safely.
But Britain’s offer in June to vaccinate delegates assuages some of that concern, she said.
“I’ve said before that I wasn’t going to go if it wasn’t fair,” Thunberg said in an interview with Reuters. “But now they say that they will vaccinate all the delegates that are going there. If that’s considered fair and safe, then I will hopefully attend.”
The 18-year-old Swedish activist, who has rallied youth to protest for climate action worldwide, said the U.N. report should be “a wake-up call, in every possible way”.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report said emissions from polluting economic activities have brought the world dangerously close to pushing global warming past the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, beyond which scientists say there could be catastrophic climate impacts.
“When these extreme weather events are happening, many say, what will it take for people in power to start acting? What are they waiting for?” Thunberg told Reuters. “And it will take many things, but especially, it will take massive pressure from the public and massive pressure from the media.”
(Reporting by Kate Abnett; editing by Katy Daigle and Giles Elgood)
