Climate activist Greta Thunberg is imploring the world to be “brave” after a comprehensive new climate report by the United Nations concluded a hotter future is locked in.
Monday’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report declared a “code red for humanity” and said even if we lessen carbon emissions substantially, global warming is still likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades – much earlier than some previous predictions.
Thunberg tweeted that the alarming report contained “no real surprises” and simply “confirms what we already know from thousands previous studies and reports – that we are in an emergency.”
In a second tweet, she told supporters it’s “up to us to be brave and take decisions based on the scientific evidence provided in these reports.”
“We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not without treating the crisis like a crisis,” she said.
Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and one of hundreds of international experts who helped write the report, told The New York Times that “we can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years.”
“Things are unfortunately likely to get worse than they are today,” Forster said.
Thunberg has been stressing the need for world leaders to drastically change how they’re responding to the climate emergency. In an impassioned speech to the UN in 2019, she declared that “people are suffering” and dying.
“Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” the activist said. “How dare you!”
She added: “You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.”