Category Archives: Greta Thunberg

Global climate strike: Greta Thunberg and school students lead climate crisis protest – live updates

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Millions of people from Sydney to Manila, Dhaka to London and New York will march for urgent action on climate breakdown

Glorious scenes in Edinburgh as thousands of children, parents, students and musicians gather at the Meadows for the Climate Strike.

“This is our Earth and our Future. We need to take care of it ,” said 11-year-old Leila Koita, pictures here with friends Eilidh Tedesco, Norah Turner, Tilly Torrie, Megan Berger and NaN Zhang.

Norah’s mum, Jo Spencely says she hasn’t been on a demo for decades but she is here to show support. “I’m massively concerned about their future. I almost can’t bear to read about the climate. It’s so scary.”

The march sets off at 11:30am and will pass through Edinburgh city centre and end with a rally in front of the Scottish Parliament. As in London, police have imposed restrictions, in this case by refusing permission for the marchers to walk down Princes Street.

As elsewhere, this is just the start of a week of climate action. On Saturday, activists will stage a “die in”, Monday will be a “day of disruption”, musicians will join a “Love the Planet Festival” on Wednesday, and there’ll be another rally outside parliament the following day.

Even Emmeline Pankhurst has joined in the protests in Manchester. A statue of the suffragette hero has donned a bright orange lifejacket and a placard that asks: “Ready for rising sea levels to reach this height?”

The stunt was the idea of Katie Bradshaw and Ryan Griffiths, both 31, who described themselves as first-protestors who felt the need to act today.

“Emmeline still carries that Mancunian spirit of standing up for what she believes in and great causes,” said Griffiths. “Climate change is so important and we think it’s something herself would be an issue she would be at the forefront of if she were around today.”

Bradshaw added: “We’ve got to do our bit and even if it’s just putting some signs up and making people realise we need to look after our planet. If she was around today she’d be supporting it.”

Emmeline Pankhurst showing the world the way in Manchester pic.twitter.com/Z1TFjYCAuN

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Climate strike in Australia: everything you need to know about Friday’s protest

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Time and location for the 20 September school strike for climate change in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, Hobart and more

Thousands of Australian school students are again preparing to walk out of classrooms across the country to demand action on the climate crisis.

The global mass day of action will take place on Friday 20 September, three days before the United Nations climate summit in New York.

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Greta Thunberg: ‘We are ignoring natural climate solutions’

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Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate

The protection and restoration of living ecosystems such as forests, mangroves and seagrass meadows can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked, Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have warned in a new short film.

Natural climate solutions could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow. But these methods receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions, say the climate activists.

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‘Wake up and face facts’ : Greta Thunberg pleads with politicians to lead fight against climate crisis – as it happened

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  • The Swedish teen activist made clear her disapproval of Trump leaving the Paris climate agreement
  • The Guardian is joining forces with more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate crisis ahead of the UN summit. Read more about Covering Climate Now.

That’s it from the Liveblog for today.

Writer (and occasional Guardian columnist) Roxane Gay has endorsed Massachusetts senator, democratic presidential candidate and selfie enthusiast Elizabeth Warren for president, joining the progressive group Working Families Party -- which endorsed Warren’s challenger Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Shoutout to our #WCW, @rgay. We’re grateful that you’re in this fight with #TeamWarren. ✨ pic.twitter.com/5YEkyrCn8X

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‘Listen to the scientists’: Greta Thunberg urges Congress to take action

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Teen climate activists attend a hearing to address the climate crisis and its traumatic effect on the younger generation

The climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has bluntly told members of Congress to heed scientists’ warnings over global heating on a day when the existential anguish of young activists was given a voice at the heart of Washington DC power.

Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has ignited a global youth climate movement, said at a congressional hearing that she had no prepared remarks other than to submit the landmark IPCC report, published last year, that warned of the rapidly approaching catastrophe of global heating.

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Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry’

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The Swedish environmentalist was one of several who spoke at a Senate climate crisis task force

At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change.

Related: UN hosts drive to suck back carbon and reverse climate change

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Greta Thunberg joins young activists in climate protest outside White House – live

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Swedish teen climate activist and other youth advocates demand action from the US to address the climate crisis

A Taliban negotiating team has reportedly arrived in Russia just days after Trump said potential peace talks with the group were “dead.”

The AP reports:

Russian state news agency Tass cited the Taliban’s Qatar-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as saying the delegation had held consultations with Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for Afghanistan.

The visit also was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Taliban official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

This may well be the most terrifying thing you read on this Friday the 13th. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, told a group of donors last month that she got her moral compass from her father.

At a mid-August fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Ivanka Trump was asked to name the personality traits she inherited most from her parents.

Without much of a pause, Trump told the crowd of roughly 120 high-end donors that her mother gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman.

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‘Let’s do it now’: Greta Thunberg crosses Atlantic and calls for urgent climate action

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  • Climate activist, 16, receives cheers as she steps off boat
  • Thunberg says: ‘Let’s not wait any longer. Let’s do it now’

Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday, stepping on to dry land after crossing the Atlantic in a zero-carbon yacht with a passionate message to tackle global heating.

Crowds had gathered to welcome her for hours beforehand, ready to welcome Thunberg’s arrival on the unconventional solar-powered craft.

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‘No sea sickness so far’: Greta Thunberg update on Atlantic crossing

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Climate activist is four days into a two-week journey on solar-powered yacht

Four days into its two-week Atlantic crossing, the solar-powered yacht carrying climate activist Greta Thunberg is becalmed in the ocean after a choppy start to the trip, still 2,500 nautical miles from New York.

In an update posted to Twitter around midday on Saturday, the 16-year-old said she was eating and sleeping well and had no sea sickness so far.

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Arron Banks jokes about Greta Thunberg and ‘freak yachting accidents’

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MPs, celebrities and academics criticise ‘disgraceful’ comment by Brexit backer

Arron Banks has been criticised after he appeared to wish harm upon Greta Thunberg as the 16-year-old activist set sail across the Atlantic in a solar-powered yacht on a zero-carbon two-week voyage.

The controversial Brexit backer warned the teenager that “freak yachting accidents do happen in August” as he responded to a tweet by Green party MP Caroline Lucas who said Thunberg was carrying “the vital message to the UN that time is running out to address the climate emergency”.

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Greta Thunberg takes climate fight to Germany’s threatened Hambach Forest

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The felling of ancient woodland to make way for a giant coal mine brings together two linked battles for the activist

Greta Thunberg started her long journey to climate summits in the Americas by joining a treetop protest in Germany’s Hambach forest, where environmentalists have been fighting for years to stop the ancient woodland being torn up for open-cast coal mining.

The battle to save the last remaining oak and hornbeam trees reflects the young activist’s entwined fights to protect the natural world from human exploitation and to halt carbon emissions.

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Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for ‘deeply disturbing’ column

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Campaigner calls out ‘hate and conspiracy campaigns’ after Australian’s attack

The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has hit back at the Australian News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt for writing a deeply offensive column that mocked her autism diagnosis.

The Swedish schoolgirl posted a tweet overnight calling out the “hate and conspiracy campaigns” run by climate deniers like Bolt, adopting his insult that she was “deeply disturbed” and turning it back on him.

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Ex-Unilever boss seeks ‘heroic CEOs’ to tackle climate change and inequality

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Paul Polman also supports Bank of England-backed group promoting disability rights

The former boss of Unilever is seeking a team of “heroic chief executives” to drive a shift to a low-carbon, more inclusive way of doing business.

Paul Polman, who stepped down from the Anglo-Dutch owner of Marmite and Dove in November last year after a decade at the helm, warns that the rise of populism and Brexit are symptoms of capitalism’s failure to adapt. Bosses, he insists, must commit to fighting inequality and tackling the climate emergency.

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‘Biggest compliment yet’: Greta Thunberg welcomes oil chief’s ‘greatest threat’ label

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Activists say comments by Opec head prove world opinion is turning against fossil fuels

Greta Thunberg and other climate activists have said it is a badge of honour that the head of the world’s most powerful oil cartel believes their campaign may be the “greatest threat” to the fossil fuel industry.

The criticism of striking students by the trillion-dollar Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) highlights the growing reputational concerns of oil companies as public protests intensify along with extreme weather.

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When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’

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One is America’s youngest-ever congresswoman, the other a Swedish schoolgirl. Two of the most powerful voices on the climate speak for the first time

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enters a boardroom at her constituency office in Queens, New York, after a short delay which, a political aide hopes, hasn’t been caused by a constituent waylaying her in the corridor. (“They can get really excited to meet her.”) Greta Thunberg is in her home in Sweden, her father testing the technology for the video link while the teenager waits in the background. The activists have never met nor spoken but, as two of the most visible climate campaigners in the world, they are keenly aware of each other.

Thunberg, now 16, catapulted to fame last year for skipping school every Friday to stand outside the Swedish parliament, protesting against political inaction over the climate crisis and sparking an international movement, the school strike for climate, in which millions of other children followed suit. Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district is, at 29, the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, whose election over a well-funded incumbent in 2018 was a huge upset to politics-as-usual. She has been in office for less than a year, which seems extraordinary given the amount of coverage she has generated. In February, Ocasio-Cortez submitted the Green New Deal to the US House of Representatives, calling for, among other things, the achievement of “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade and “a full transition off fossil fuels”, as well as retrofitting all buildings in the US to meet new energy efficient standards.

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Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis

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Hundreds of thousands walk out of lessons in 110 countries demanding urgent action

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis.

Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said.

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Germany’s AfD turns on Greta Thunberg as it embraces climate denial

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Rightwing populists to launch attack on climate science in vote drive before EU elections

Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as “mentally challenged” and a fraud.

The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.

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Greta Thunberg condemns UK’s climate stance in speech to MPs

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Teenager who sparked global youth movement hits out at airport expansion and support for fossil fuels

‘You did not act in time’ – Thunberg’s full speech

The UK government’s active support for fossil fuels and airport expansion is “beyond absurd”, Greta Thunberg has told MPs.

The 16-year-old Swedish student, who sparked a global youth-based movement when she began a “climate strike” outside Sweden’s parliament last year, gave a typically blunt speech. She told MPs: “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”

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Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act

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Swedish activist says world faces ‘existential crisis’ and must achieve goals of Paris deal

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, has given her support for a general strike for the climate, saying the student movement she inspired needs more support from older generations to ensure politicians keep their promises under the Paris agreement.

Speaking at a public event in London as Extinction Rebellion protests continued in the capital, the initiator of the school strike for climate movement was typically frank about the scale of the problem the world faces and the impact her campaign has made. “People are slowly becoming more aware, but emissions continue to rise. We can’t focus on small things. Basically, nothing has changed,” she said.

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Police clear Extinction Rebellion protesters from Waterloo Bridge

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Arrests made after police urge activists to move to Marble Arch, where Greta Thunberg spoke to protesters on Sunday

Police have cleared the remaining Extinction Rebellion activists from Waterloo Bridge in London, despite earlier calls on social media for people that were willing to be arrested to “go there and save it”.

The roads around Parliament Square were cleared of protesters earlier on Sunday, with the northbound carriageway of Waterloo Bridge re-opened to traffic by the evening. On Sunday night police continued their operations, moving to remove the last activists who had glued themselves to the bridge and to each other.

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