Greta Thunberg: ‘Immediately Halt All Investments In Fossil Fuel Exploration And Extraction’

What’s she gonna do next? This Little Miss Stampy Foot routine is wearing thin.

Yesterday, Karen wrote about the contrast between the statements made by President Trump and Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The NY Times has published Thunberg’s full remarks at the forum and they are pretty striking. In addition to her usual tone of condescension toward world leaders, Thunberg explained that the only solution was to completely abandon fossil fuels immediately. She doesn’t want to talk about “net zero” emissions she wants to see “real zero” right now.

One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I can assure you it doesn’t lead to anything…

We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching “net zero emissions” or “carbon neutrality” by cheating and fiddling around with numbers. We are not telling you to “offset your emissions” by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate…

Let’s be clear. We don’t need a “low carbon economy.” We don’t need to “lower emissions.” Our emissions have to stop if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target. And, until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero.

A bit later she spells it out:

We demand at this year’s World Economic Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:

Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.

Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.

And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.

We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021. We want this done now.