Greta Thunberg (klimataktivist)

More than 200 events planned worldwide to demand immediate action for communities already affected by climate change
Glasgow is bracing for the second day of protests against what campaigners say is a lack of urgency to address global warming after environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg called the crunch UN climate summit in the UK a “failure”.

She told those who gathered: ‘It is not a secret that Cop26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place.

‘And more and more people are starting to realise this. Many are starting to ask themselves what will it take for the people in power to wake up.

‘But let’s be clear, they are already awake. They know exactly what they are doing. They know exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to maintain business as usual.

‘The leaders are not doing nothing. They are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves. And to continue profiting from this destructive system.

‘This is an active choice by the leaders to continue to let the exploitation of people and nature and the destruction of present and future living conditions to take place.’

Thunberg claimed that the 30,000 delegates attending Cop26 were being fed a ‘greenwashing’ PR event that was aimed at maintaining a status quo on behalf of the event’s sponsors, which include major energy companies.

Thunberg said: 'The Cop has turned into a PR event where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets while behind the curtains the governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.

‘It seems like their main goal is to continue to fight for the status quo. And Cop 26 has been named the most exclusionary Cop ever.

The current ecological crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum,’ Thunberg, who also took part in the march, said.

‘It is directly tied to other crisis and injustices that they back to colonialism and beyond, crisis based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and somehow have the right to exploit others and steal their land and resources.

'And it is very naive of us to think we can solve this crisis without addressing the root cause of it.

‘But this is not going to be spoken about inside the Cop. It’s just too uncomfortable.
And the questions we must ask ourselves is, what is it that we are fighting for.

‘Are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet or are we fighting to maintain business as usual.

‘Our leaders say that we can have both but the harsh truth is that that is not possible in practice.

‘The people in power can continue to live in their bubble filled with their fantasies, like eternal growth on a finite planet and technological solutions that will suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere and will erase all of these crises just like that