IF ONE 17 year old woman can stand up to world “leaders” – where are the rest of you?
“We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching ‘net zero’ emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating or fiddling around with numbers. We are not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa – while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate.
“Planting trees is good, of course: but it’s nowhere near enough for what is needed, and it cannot replace real mitigation and re-wilding nature.
“And let’s be clear: we don’t need a ‘low carbon economy’. We don’t need to ‘lower’ emissions. Our emissions have to stop – if you are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5 degree target.
“And until we have the technologies that, at scale, can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about ‘net zero’. We need ‘real zero’.”
Greta Thunberg, Davos, 21st January 2020
•Read more about it: Thought for today The Thames Today