Greta Thunberg tells UN climate summit: ‘You stole my childhood’

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg accused world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit of having stolen her childhood with their ‘empty words’.

The Swedish campaigner blasted delegates at the United Nations conference for not doing enough to protect the environment.

‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,’ she said.

The UN is kicking off an all-day session to prevent a warming world from reaching even more dangerous levels.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the Climate Action Summit on Monday by saying: ‘Earth is issuing a chilling cry: Stop.’

More than 60 world leaders are set to speak at the conference.

Before they got up and took turns pledging to do more to prevent global warming in a series of short speeches, Greta delivered an emotional one of her own.

‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here,’ she said.

‘I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you.

‘And yet I’m one of the lucky ones.

‘People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.

‘We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you.

‘For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear.

‘How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

‘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.’