What Global Climate Activists Are Demanding

Youth Climate Summit Green Ticket Winners

More than 500 young activists got together at the UN to demand radical action on climate change. 100 “Green Ticket” winners who demonstrated commitment to climate action and problem solving were chosen from around the world to attend the first ever UN Youth Climate Summit. The winners are now looking to share their message and initiate action. It came days before a climate action summit which UN chief Antonio Guterres has called to seek greater commitments from world leaders on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris accord to avert runaway global warming.

Thunberg, whose protests outside Sweden’s parliament last year sparked the global youth movement, spoke first but briefly, saying she wanted to give more time to others. “Millions of people across the globe marched and demanded real climate action, especially young people. We showed that we are united and that we young people are unstoppable,” Greta Thunberg tells a large crowd in NYC. Masses of children skipped school to join global strikes that Thunberg said were “only the beginning” of the movement. Green Ticket winners Lalita Anousha Purbho-Junggee, Côme Girschig, Jackson Zhao, Vania Santoso and Jorge Martínez Pérez Tejada all stated their environmental plights to highlight the case of climate change of their respected countries.

Activists at the gathering demanded money for a fund to help poorer nations adapt to a warming world and provide greener energy. They also insisted that the world should wean itself quickly from coal, oil and gas, linked to climate change. During Thunberg’s short lifetime, for example, Earth has already warmed 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.34 degrees Celsius). After listening to Thunberg and other youth climate activists, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres credited young people with transforming him from a pessimist to an optimist in the fight against global warming.

Brut.