Greta Thunberg calls for climate leadership in talks with Merkel

Berlin (dpa) – Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and three other young women campaigning for action on climate change called for bravery and leadership from politicians in the face of the crisis, following talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday.

“We asked her to treat the climate crisis like you treat any other crisis,” Thunberg told reporters following their 90-minute discussion at Merkel’s Chancellery.

“What we want is leaders, we want people to step up,” the 17-year-old added.

Merkel “has a huge responsibility but also a huge opportunity,” Thunberg said of the German leader, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

“We were thankful for the occasion and for the time, which was certainly quite a lengthy conversation,” said Luisa Neubauer, the 24-year-old face of Germany’s branch of Fridays for Future, a grassroots movement that grew out of Thunberg’s activism.

She said that the discussion, also attended by Belgian campaigners Anuna de Wever and Adelaide Charlier, focused on climate policy at the German, European and international level, including trade agreements and pricing mechanisms to make carbon more expensive.

“It became very clear that we look at the situation from different perspectives,” Neubauer said, referring to Merkel. “We made clear that what we are asking for is nothing less and nothing more than for the Paris agreement to be translated into politics.”

Under that accord, world powers have committed to limiting global warming to well below two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Germany is in lockstep with the European Commission’s proposal to increase the EU’s 2030 target on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from 50 to 55 per cent compared with 1990 levels.

However, the climate activists have slammed even this more ambitious goal as insufficient.

Germany’s plan to phase out coal by 2038 has also been criticized as too sluggish.

Merkel told the activists “that she will take into consideration to try to be more brave,” Charlier said.

Thursday’s talks came on the symbolic two-year anniversary of Thunberg’s school strikes for climate, which galvanized global rallying cries on the issue, led predominantly by the younger generation.

“We are I guess celebrating the two-year anniversary, but we aren’t the kind of people who spend time to celebrate,” the teenager told reporters in Berlin.

Thunberg was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2019 – four years after Merkel.

Following mass school strikes and climate demonstrations in countries across the globe in September that year, the protest movement has been less visible in recent months.

Following a pandemic-induced hiatus, the next major climate demonstrations are scheduled to take place on September 25.

On arriving at the Chancellery in Berlin, the four young campaigners were greeted by around 20 supporters, who held signs demanding action from politicians and chanted “you are robbing us of our future.”

The activists also discussed with Merkel an open letter addressed to EU leaders and signed by 125,000 people that demands tougher action, including a halt on fossil fuel investments and subsidies.

In a statement released after the meeting, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said: “Both sides agreed that global warming is a global challenge in which industrialized states carry a particular responsibility.

“The basis of this is the effective implementation of the Paris climate agreement.”