Swedish climate worrier Greta Thunberg will meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, giving the German leader 90 minutes to outline Europe’s approach to the global “climate emergency.”
The head-to-head comes just two months after Thunberg publicly scolded Merkel for being “attention seeking” after she lined up for a picture alongside the teenager at the U.N. in New York.
Thunberg has also accused the German federal government of not doing enough to protect the climate and threatened to sue the country to force it to change its ways.
Now Germany holds the E.U. Council Presidency, Thunberg said she expects it to pursue “extensive climate protection policies.”
The teenager will also deliver a list of climate demands she has drawn up with her followers to be passed on to world leaders without delay.
We will deliver your signatures to the meeting and the letter will remain open for anyone to sign.
Sign and share here: https://t.co/WL0bs48m6n#FaceTheClimateEmergency 2/2— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 14, 2020
As recently as last June, an exasperated Thunberg scolded “presidents, prime ministers, kings and princesses” she claimed only wanted to burnish their image by being photographed in her presence, as Breitbart News reported.
As part of a new series about her campaigning made for Swedish radio during the coronavirus lockdown, Thunberg revealed Merkel had waited in a line to have a “selfie” with the teenager at a U.N. climate meeting
Now she wants to talk again and the German leader is the focus of her push for a higher climate profile.
“We need to see it as, above all, an existential crisis. And as long as it’s not being treated as a crisis, we can have as many of these climate change negotiations and talks, conferences as possible. It won’t change a thing,” Thunberg told Reuters last month ahead of the meeting.
She said only fundamental change to the existing system would bring climate change under control, continuing her ongoing calls for immediate action.
Greta Thunberg issues her latest round of demands. https://t.co/xDgU0dWUio
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 12, 2020
Thunberg cited a U.N. study published in November that suggested planned investments to boost fossil fuel production are likely to push temperature goals enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement out of reach.
“So that means that if we are to stay below these targets, we have to make it possible to tear up and abandon valid contracts and deals. And that is not possible within today’s system,” Thunberg said.
“So, yes, then obviously we need to think differently. And, yes, we need to think outside the box.”
Thunberg’s meeting in Berlin coincides with the second anniversary of the start of her climate protest.
On August 20, 2018, the then 15-year-old Swede sat in front of the Reichstag in Stockholm to call on her government to take stronger action against the climate crisis.
This resulted in the international climate movement Fridays for Future and catapulted Thunberg and her family onto the global environmental scene.
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