Popular Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg has said that she will not attend next month’s “greenwashing” UN’s 27th conference on climate which opens in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on 6 November.
“I’m not going to Cop27 for many reasons, but the space for civil society this year is extremely limited,” she said while fielding questions at the launch of her latest book at London’s Southbank Centre.
Recall that the 19-year-old activist had previously tweeted to express her support for the “prisoners of conscience” being held in Egypt. The
Criticising the global summit, she said, “the Cops are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,”.
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Thunberg was among those who last week accused Greenpeace of “greenwashing” the Egyptian government’s image and discouraging other activists from forcefully raising the country’s abysmal human rights record ahead of the climate summit.
She maintained that the Cop conferences are not really meant to change the whole system”, but instead encourage gradual progress, adding that “the Cops are not really working, unless of course, we use them as an opportunity to mobilise.”
This July, a group of environmentalists and activists wrote an open letter expressing their alarm over what they termed Egypt’s ability to host the event successfully because of its poor record on human rights, especially as thousands of prisoners of conscience remain imprisoned.
Released last week, Thunberg’s The Climate Book includes about 100 contributions from various experts, including economist Thomas Piketty, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the writer Naomi Klein.
Thunberg’s royalties for the book will go to her foundation, which will distribute them to charitable organisations working on environmental issues.
The activist said she wanted the book to “be educational, which is a bit ironic since my thing is school strikes”, referring to her protests in front of the Swedish parliament starting in 2018.
This Sunday, Thunberg called for more people to get involved in climate activism, as according to her, the time had come for “drastic changes” to the status quo.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
