Greta Thunberg Says It’s ‘Weird’ Joe Biden Is Considered A Climate Leader | Greta thunberg

In a interview With the Washington Post, the 18-year-old Swedish environmental activist rejected the idea of ​​the US president as a leader on climate issues.

“It’s weird that people think of Joe Biden as a climate leader when you look at what his administration is doing,” he said. “The United States is actually expanding the fossil fuel infrastructure.

“Why is the United States doing that? It shouldn’t fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school, raise this awareness and inform people that we are actually facing an emergency. “

When asked what he wants politicians like Biden to do, Thunberg said: “First of all, we have to understand what the emergency is.

“We are trying to find a solution to a crisis that we do not understand… it is about narrative. It is about, what are we really trying to solve? Is it this emergency or is it this emergency? “

In November, Thunberg called the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow “a failure”, arguing that it “turned into a public relations event” in which “leaders are doing nothing” except “actively creating loopholes and shaping to the frameworks “to continue benefiting from a” destructive system “.

Speaking to the Post, Thunberg said that a final COP26 deal “which is a great achievement” will mean nothing unless it raises the ambitions that the leaders then fulfill.

One of the positive aspects of Cop26, he said, was that it revealed that “in the current circumstances, within the current systems, we will not be able to solve the climate crisis unless there is massive pressure from the outside.”

Thunberg said global summits like Cop26 present a “great opportunity” for public mobilization to highlight the climate crisis.

In Glasgow, Biden promised that the United States would “lead by example” in the fight to prevent global warming above 1.5 ° C. He made new pledges to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and to end deforestation, sparking widespread praise.

Yet when more than 40 countries announced a promise to end coal mining, the United States was absent from the list.

In a recent report, the UN environment program and other researchers found that global oil and gas production is on track to increase over the next 20 years at a rate that will result in doubling the production of fossil fuels. in 2030 consistent with an increase of 1.5 ° C.