Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg schooled US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday after he said she needs a college degree in economics before he’ll condescend to take her seriously about climate change.
“It doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up,” Thunberg, 17, tweeted in response to Mnuchin’s dig.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thunberg and other young climate activists called on corporate and world leaders to divest from fossil fuel exploration and extraction to save the planet.
“Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin mocked Thunberg, later claiming he was joking and that it was “funny.” But he added: “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.”
Thunberg snapped back:
Thunberg was hardly the only one to pile on Mnuchin after his smug remark. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman berated Mnuchin for so poorly understanding his own purported area of expertise — the economy — that he claimed the Trump administration’s massive corporate tax cut would “pay for itself,” instead of breaking the US budget, as it has.
“Haters gonna hate and deniers will deny ... logic, science and environmental consensus,” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has an economics degree, in Thunberg’s defence.
The Earth just suffered its hottest decade ever on record.