Six months into a global pandemic, the world has changed drastically - face masks and hand sanitizers are common now, as is singing 'Happy birthday' in your head while washing your hands.
While most of the world has accepted that we're in a war with an invisible virus, there are still many, including some top world leaders who think the virus is still harmless, or a sham.
Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, in a recent interview with Reuters shared some advice on how leaders can tackle climate change which we can perhaps apply to the current situation in the world right now - and ourselves.
"If you're going to get healthy, you have to admit you're sick," says Thunberg in a video. "And that is something that our leaders cannot seem to do today," she adds.
‘We can no longer continue to sweep these things under the carpet,’ activist @GretaThunberg said, calling on leaders to protect the most vulnerable. Read more https://t.co/60vswB5qQS pic.twitter.com/8CC1wod63U
— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) July 17, 2020
Greta Thunberg also told Reuters that the world needed an economic overhaul to have a chance of beating climate change and that countries should be prepared to tear up old deals and contracts to meet green targets.
"We need to see it as, above all, an existential crisis. And as long as it’s not being treated as a crisis, we can have as many of these climate change negotiations and talks, conferences as possible. It won’t change a thing,” Thunberg said, speaking via video from her home in Stockholm.
Thunberg, who lambasted world leaders at a U.N. climate summit last year for believing in “fairytales” of eternal economic growth, said that only fundamental change to the existing system would bring climate change under control.
She cited a U.N. study published in November that suggested planned investments to boost fossil fuel production are likely to push temperature goals enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement out of reach.
“So that means that if we are to stay below these targets, we have to make it possible to tear up and abandon valid contracts and deals. And that is not possible within today’s system,” Thunberg said
(With inputs from Reuters.)
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