Hi there,

This month, Democracy Now! marks 29 years of fearless independent journalism. Presidents have come, gone and come back again, but Democracy Now! remains, playing the same critical role in our democracy: shining a spotlight on corporate and government abuses of power and raising up the voices of scholars, advocates, scientists, activists, artists and ordinary people working for a more peaceful and just world. If our journalism is important to you, please donate today in honor of our 29th anniversary. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much.

Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Greta Thunberg: New IPCC Report Is a Wake-Up Call for All About the Escalating Climate Emergency

Listen
Media Options
Listen

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should serve as a “wake-up call” for governments to do more to lower emissions. In its first major report in nearly a decade, the IPCC says the Earth could face runaway global warming unless drastic efforts are made to eliminate greenhouse gases and that humans are “unequivocally to blame for the climate crisis,” which is already causing widespread and rapid changes. “The climate crisis is not going away,” Thunberg said. “It’s only escalating, and it’s only growing more intense by the hour.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to Greta Thunberg, who has just responded to the new IPCC report.

GRETA THUNBERG: We have not once been treating this crisis like an actual crisis. And, of course, media is reporting now about extreme weather events and consequences of the climate crisis, but, then again, we also have to remember that these are all just symptoms of the climate crisis. We are not talking about the root cause itself, the things that is actually fueling these events. We are not holding people in power accountable. We are not talking about the current, best-available science, what it says, and how the situation looks like now. And we are especially not talking about the gap between what politicians are saying and what they are actually doing. …

This report doesn’t tell us what to do. It doesn’t say you have to do this, and then you have to do this. It doesn’t provide us with such solutions or tell us that you need to do this. That’s up for us. We are the ones who need to take the decisions, and we are the ones who need to be brave and ask the difficult questions to ourselves, like: What do we value? Are we ready to take action to ensure future and present living conditions?

So, I hope that this can be a wake-up call and that it really gives perspective and that it, once again, can be a reminder that the climate crisis has not gone away, it’s only escalating, and it’s only growing more intense by the hour.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Greta Thunberg responding to the new IPCC report. She was responding from Stockholm, Sweden.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Next story from this daily show

From Fires to Floods to Sea Level Rise, Human-Induced Climate Crisis Is Severely Disrupting Earth

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top