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• Anders Hellberg via wikimedia commons

'How Dare You!' Greta Thunberg Rebukes World Leaders
"We will not let you get away with this," the 16-year-old climate strike leader told the U.N.

By Oliver Milman

After rallying 4 million people into the streets in the biggest global climate strike yet, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg brought her message inside United Nations headquarters the following Monday with a furious speech that repeatedly demanded of world leaders, "How dare you?"

Seated alongside U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and two other young climate activists, Thunberg opened the U.N. Climate Action Summit by blasting the assembled heads of government with a speech that was equal parts "J'accuse" and hardball politics. "My message [to world leaders] is that we'll be watching you," Thunberg began. Then, as tears of rage and grief overtook her, the founder of the global climate strike movement all but shouted, "I shouldn't be here. I should be back home, at school.... You come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my childhood and my dreams. And I am one of the lucky ones. People all over the world are suffering and dying. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear," Thunberg continued. "How dare you look away and say that you are doing enough!" Noting that the world's carbon budget for a 1.5 degree Celsius future will be exhausted within 8.5 years under business-as-usual according to the scientists of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she repeated, "How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business as usual?" Predicting that none of their speeches would wrestle with those imposing numbers, Thunberg declared that world leaders are "still not mature enough to tell it like it is." The fury returning to her face, she warned, "You are betraying us. ... If you choose to fail us, then I say, 'We will never forgive you.'"

As Thunberg's speech appeared live on one internal U.N. video feed, a second feed showed President Donald Trump arriving at the U.N.—but not for the Climate Action Summit. In a clear snub, the White House instead reserved a conference room where Trump would attend a meeting on religious freedom along with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who now serves as a U.N. special envoy on climate action, called out the U.S. president by name in a separate speech, to the Climate Action Summit, declaring in a perfect deadpan that he thanked Trump for coming to the U.N. and hoped that suggestions "will be helpful as he formulates a climate policy" for the U.S.

Thunberg, for her part, made it clear that she and other young activists will take no prisoners as they demand emergency action against climate breakdown. In a challenge to Trump and all leaders who are not stepping up, Thunberg warned, her eyes flashing, "We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not."

This story originally appeared in The Nation. It is republished here as part of City Weekly's partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen climate coverage.