"The Planet Is Being Killed": Greta Thunberg criticized the governments of the world

The planet “is not dying, it’s being killed, and we know who,” said Greta Thunberg, who spoke at the UN’s annual climate talks for the first time in five years, criticizing governments for failing to avert an environmental catastrophe.

Swedish activist, 23-year-old Thunberg, who became famous for leading the school movement to fight climate change, made her scathing statement to those gathered at the Cop31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, amid the continued failure of countries to properly cope with the climate crisis.

“The Earth is being killed by the same people who were supposed to come to our aid,” Thunberg said. - No one's coming to our aid. When states and other institutions threaten our human rights, it is our duty to stand up and be adults on this issue and fight for the rights of every human being.

Thunberg, who in recent years has shifted her focus to other areas such as the Gaza conflict, has linked the deteriorating global climate to other disasters such as war, speaking alongside activists from Nepal, Canada and Australia.

“We are moving towards a future where there will be more genocides and ecocide, and the total infringement of our fundamental rights, where basic necessities become luxuries,” she said. In places like this, it is clearer than ever that the situation cannot be less controlled. The planet is not dying, it is being killed.”.

The speech came on the fourth day of the two-week summit, as world leaders arriving in this coastal city on the Mediterranean made their own judgments about the climate crisis and the slow progress in overcoming it.

Andy Burnham, the British prime minister who was the only G7 leader to attend the talks, said in a speech that Britain's record hot summer was "abnormal.".

"The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it has now hit all of us, destroying lives and livelihoods everywhere," said Burnham, who promised the UK would reach zero emissions and backed countries' proposal to further electrify its economy.

The goal of electrification is one of the main potential promises expected in the talks, which are held under the joint chairmanship of Turkey and Australia. Some countries want the text of the agreement to state that electricity will be generated from clean energy sources.

Campaigners have criticised governments for the slow pace of emissions reductions and for failing so far to agree on a phase-out of fossil fuels in negotiations.

According to the Climate Action Tracker report published on Thursday, current policies will lead to the fact that by the end of the century the temperature on the planet will rise by 2.7 ° C. The catastrophic temperature rise is slightly larger than expected last year and well above the 1.5°C promised by world leaders.

Thursday was full of reports of damage caused by the climate crisis. Gita Chaudhary, Nepal's environment minister, spoke about a catastrophic landslide caused by a melting glacier that hit the country in August and killed more than 1,500 people. “We call the catastrophic climate change we have suffered a mountain tsunami,” Chaudhary told The Guardian. “We lost people, we lost lives, we lost property. Nepal is working on infrastructure rehabilitation and reconstruction. But we cannot revive communities, culture, people’s lives.””.

In the main conference room, a speech by Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian prime minister, drew raucous applause from delegates as he spoke about the environmental consequences of the three-year war with Israel. “Israel’s restrictions on access to land, water and natural resources have exacerbated Palestine’s climate problems,” said Mustafa, who described how widespread destruction in Gaza, including water, sewage and agricultural land, has exacerbated environmental and health risks.

Turkey's Cop31 organizers have repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and refused to invite the country's leadership to Antalya. Israel denies he committed genocide and insists he waged a lawful war to ensure his own safety.

Another country not officially attending the talks is the United States, which did not send a delegation. Donald Trump has pulled the country out of the international climate system, ridiculed climate science as a “hoax” and said he would not allow the construction of new wind turbines.

The position drew a rebuke from John Kerry, a former U.S. secretary of state who traveled to Turkey along with 20 Democratic members of Congress and two state governors. "He's the biggest loser we've seen in a long time on all these issues," Kerry said of Trump in response to a question from The Guardian.

The overwhelming victory of the Democrats in the midterm elections instilled in the U.S. in the hope of resuming the fight against the climate crisis. But Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, warned there would be no fundamental change in climate policy in the final two years of Trump's presidency.