Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has accused politicians of "cheating" and "skirting" to "avoid their responsibilities" while the world faces an "unprecedented climate crisis”.
In an interview with France Inter radio, the 19-year-old said people needed to understand that “the house is on fire", while also criticizing the media for not disseminating enough information.
Educating people and listening to scientists was the key to fully understanding the global scale of the climate emergency, Thunberg said while adding that society was “describing the symptoms of the crisis" without explaining its causes.
“It's like if the house burns down and you say, how am I going to turn off the oven? It is important to put out the oven, but it is necessary to understand above all that there is a fire in the house. That is our concern,” Thunberg said.
Info wars
While people have plenty of information on global warming, they do not have enough knowledge, Thunberg added – despite "increasingly clear and unequivocal scientific data".
"I believe this climate crisis is also a crisis of the information which is not disseminated as it should be,” the teenager said, adding the media needed to perform better.
Ongoing climate change, she said, was linked to humanity’s actions and may even be changing much faster than we realise.
At this "particularly decisive” moment in human history,” Thunberg is campaigning for an end to the extraction of fossil fuels at the current rate, and an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
“The people who have contributed the most to this crisis will be the least affected by the effects of this climate change, while those who have contributed the least will suffer more,” Thunberg told France Inter.
She points the finger at the role of politicians, who "constantly cheat" and "avoid their responsibilities”.
Her interview on French radio coincides with the international release of Thunberg’s book called The Climate Book, which among other things includes advice from climate activists on how to stop destroying the Earth.
