15-Year-Old Girl Pleads for Next Generation at Climate Talks

The 15-year-old girl was a solo protestor outside the Swedish Parliament.

15-Year-Old Girl Pleads for Next Generation at Climate Talks. Image used for representation.

(Photo: iStockphoto)

At the COP24 climate talks in Poland, a 15-year-old girl, Greta Thunberg, said that her generation has to bear the burnt of climate change, something her parents’ generation is responsible for, AFP reported.

By the time Greta turns 45, tens of millions of people would have fled their homes due to climate change.

"It's us who are going to live in this world. If I live to be 100, I will be alive in 2103 and that is a long time in the future," she told AFP at the COP24 climate talks.

“We will have to live with the mess that older generations have made. We will have to clean it up for them. That is not fair.”

Greta Thunberg, Climate Change activist 

Greta has been known for campaigning to slash green house gas emissions for some time now. In August, she was a solo protester outside the Swedish Parliament.

Officials from nearly 200 nations are at the UN Climate summit in Poland trying to agree on a rulebook that will make good on the pledges they made under the 2015 Paris agreement.  

That treaty aims to limit global temperature rises to well below 2°C and beneath the safer threshold of 1.5°C if at all possible.

Greta and her father are at the COP24 talks to call on lawmakers to act on the issue now.

Greta has even insisted that her own family turn vegan and give up flying.

(With inputs from AFP)