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'I want you to panic': Swedish teen raises climate alarm at Davos
By Nina LARSON
Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 25, 2019

From slowing growth to climate panic: hot topics at Davos 2019
Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 25, 2019 - - Climate emergency -

"I am here to say our house is on fire." -- Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish teenager whose advocacy against global warming has inspired global youth. She shocked her audience of the business elite in an uncompromising speech on Friday.

"Climate change is running faster than we are. I believe we are losing the race." -- UN chief Antonio Guterres sounds the alarm on global warming at a Davos forum where the business elite faced criticisms of doing too little against the planetary crisis.

"I think people are beginning to realise that there is no business on a dead planet." -- Christina Figueres, founder of the non-governmental organisation Global Optimism.

- No shows -

"She will be focused on matters here." -- The spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, announcing the embattled leader was missing the forum in order to address the Brexit turmoil rumbling in London.

"What a great headline: Kerry replaces Pompeo." -- Former US secretary of state John Kerry draws a big laugh after a panel moderator thanks him for replacing the current office holder, the right-wing Mike Pompeo, at the last minute due to the government shutdown in Washington.

"New winds are blowing across the world." -- US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, addressing the Davos audience by video from Washington, celebrating a wave of populist "disruption" across the globe.

- Economic slowdown -

"The bottom line is that after two years of solid expansion, the world economy is growing more slowly than expected, and risks are rising." -- IMF chief Christine Lagarde draws a gloomy picture of the world economy on the opening day of the forum.

"The number is 6.6 percent. I think this is a pretty significant number. Not low at all." -- Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan shrugs off alarm from the world markets about the state of economic growth in China.

- Davos doubts -

"When institutions like the World Economic Forum fail to stand up and speak out, they become complicit." -- Amnesty International chief Kumi Naidoo sends a harsh message to Davos for allowing a large Saudi presence without devoting time to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"It's not pessimistic.... It's just a feeling that it won't be so great this year. It is almost dull. I don't understand it. I'm still trying to sort it out." -- Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff, a Davos regular, says the early days of the forum lacked the same oomph of previous years.

"At Davos, you don't have to kiss the golden calf. I don't do that." -- EU Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici pushes back on talk that attending the forum is to celebrate the rich and powerful.

- Venezuela -

"Brazil recognises Mr Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim president." -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tweets from Davos that his country no longer recognises Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela's leader. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, also at the forum, expresses her country's "full support" for Guaido.

"Venezuela has a very long road ahead, Venezuela has to be rebuilt, relaunched, rethought, remade." -- Moises Na�m, a Venezuelan writer and journalist who was also a minister under the presidency of Carlos Andres Perez.

- Royals and celebs -

"I'd like to say it's a personal treat for me to be sitting here asking you questions. Normally I have to endure people asking me questions." -- Britain's Prince William cracks an opening joke as he begins an interview with Sir David Attenborough, the celebrated TV naturalist.

"Capitalism is not immoral, it's amoral." -- U2 frontman Bono, a Davos regular, providing his usual dose of rock-n-roll rebellion to the forum's jet set at a panel with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and IMF chief Christine Lagarde.

Camera crews push past tycoons and government leaders to get a close shot of the unlikely star at Davos this year: a Swedish teen with long braids and a big message for the world.

Greta Thunberg blinks into the cameras of the media throng as she emerges timidly from a closed-door panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, the annual get-together of the rich and powerful.

"She silenced the room... The girl was extremely moving," head of Expedia Group Mark Okerstrom told AFP.

"It was very inspiring," Olivier Puech, a top executive at American Tower Corporation agreed.

During her speech, which she repeated for journalists barred from the room, the 16-year-old climate crusader said "our house is on fire".

"Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope," she said, furrowing her brow and fiddling awkwardly with her notes.

"But I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic," she said.

Thunberg with her small stature and round cheeks looks younger than 16. She first grabbed the spotlight in August when she began staging "school strikes for the climate", skipping classes on Fridays to protest in front of Swedish parliament.

But she drew global attention when she delivered a fiery speech to world leaders at last month's UN climate talks in Poland.

Inspired, tens of thousands of schoolchildren from around the world have followed her lead and ditched school to demand serious action against climate change.

- 'Unthinkable price tag' -

"At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories, but their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag," Thunberg said,

"We can still fix this. But unless we recognise the overall failures of our current system, we most probably don't stand a chance," she warned.

She demands that leaders do whatever it takes to adhere to the Paris climate agreement that seeks to limit global temperature rises to below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

On Friday, she bundled up and joined dozens of schoolchildren and other youths near the snowbound Davos Congress Centre for another "school strike".

"I'm skipping school," said Maximilian Christian, a 15-year-old high schooler from nearby Coire. "Greta inspired me to join the movement, and now I am here sitting next to her."

Thunberg arrived in Davos on Wednesday, after a 32-hour train journey from Stockholm, and has been camping out up the mountain at the WEF's so-called Arctic Basecamp.

"I have stopped flying for climate reasons," she told AFP earlier this week, adding that she had also convinced her parents to stop flying and to go vegan.

"I want to practise as I preach."

Asked during the press conference whether she felt her message had been heard, Thunberg said: "I think I have been heard by people, but maybe not listened to by the most important people."

The young Swede, who has publicly said she has Aspergers, told journalists she did not "like talking with people."

"It is only when I really need to speak that I speak."

Despite her subdued demeanour, she fired up the crowds at Davos at events with the likes of Bono and Jane Goodall.

- 'Voice of outrage' -

The teen said she felt her voice had a particular resonance "because I am a child."

"When I say that you have stolen my generation and future generation's future, I think adults feel very guilty," she said.

Thunberg is "a very powerful voice," said Christiana Figueres, who spearheaded the 2015 Paris climate accord.

"She is a voice for the younger generation, (and) the voice of outrage."

Amnesty International chief Kumi Naidoo pointed out that "it is young people who are going to pay the consequences for the failure of adult leadership" on climate change.

Thunberg acknowledged that the battle against climate change is "the greatest and most complex challenge that homosapiens have ever faced."

But the main solution "is so simple that even a small child can understand it: We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases."

"Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don't ... There are no grey areas when it comes to survival."


Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation


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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Time to 'get angry', teen climate activist says in Davos
Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 24, 2019
Her train journey from Sweden took 32 hours, but Greta Thunberg is not tired. The teenager is dead-set in her mission to persuade the global elite in Davos to take climate action. The 16-year-old has galvanised protests by schoolchildren around the world, after delivering a fiery speech to world leaders at last month's UN climate talks in Poland. "I would like to talk to people in power," the Swedish crusader told AFP shortly after arriving in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. Unlik ... read more

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