Greta Thunberg tells Joe Biden to ‘treat the climate crisis like a crisis’ and accuses him of being ‘not nearly enough in line with the science’
- The 18-year-old Swede sparred publicly with Donald Trump over climate policy
- But though Biden returned to the Paris agreement – Thunberg said he wasn’t actually setting policy to stay below the 2 degrees Celsius outlined in the treaty
- Thunberg said: ‘[The policy] is not nearly enough in line with the science. That’s not me saying, that’s just black and white, looking at the facts’
Greta Thunberg has told Joe Biden to ‘treat the climate crisis like a crisis’ and accused of not doing nearly enough to follow the Paris agreements.
The 18-year-old Swede sparred publicly with Donald Trump and even endorsed Biden ahead of the election in a rare party political tweet, saying the battle for the White House went the ‘above and beyond all that.’
But despite the US returning to the Paris climate accord and a flurry of executive orders, Thunberg attacked Biden for failing to reduce green house gas emissions to limit global warming to the 2 degrees Celsius set out in the treaty.
Speaking to MSNBC, Thunberg was asked about her decision to urge people to go out and vote for Biden and how she felt about that today.
Thunberg was speaking to MSNBC when she savaged Biden for not doing enough to address the ‘climate crisis’
Biden pictured at the White House on Monday during an event to promote to women as elite, four-star generals. As well as rejoining the Paris treaty, Biden appointed John Kerry as climate tsar and cancelled the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
‘Well, you shouldn’t take that from me, I’m just a teenager, so I’m not – I don’t have the mandate to sort of give grades like that. My opinions on this doesn’t matter,’ Thunberg said.
‘You should rather look at the science and whether his policies are in line with the Paris agreements and to stay below 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius, and then you can clearly see that, no, it’s not nearly enough in line with the science. That’s not me saying, that’s just black and white, looking at the facts.’
As well as rejoining the Paris treaty, Biden appointed John Kerry as climate tsar and cancelled the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
He has also called a halt to oil and gas drilling at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two national monuments in Utah, and the Arctic national wildlife refuge wilderness.
In his inauguration speech Biden mentioned that America needed to respond to a ‘climate in crisis.’
He has previously warned that the phenomenon poses the ‘greatest threat’ to the United States.
But Thunberg said she was disappointed so far.
She told MSNBC: ‘I would just like you to basically just treat the climate crisis like a crisis. They have said themselves that this is an existential threat and they better treat it accordingly – which they are not.
‘They are just treating the climate crisis as it was a political topic, among other topics and, yeah, treat it as a crisis, that’s the No. 1 step.’
When asked what she would advise Biden to do in terms of policy, Thunberg replied that she would not do that because ‘it wouldn’t be democratic.’
Instead, she said it is better to inform the public and persuade people that climate change is a crisis.
Thunberg has been on the world stage since 2018, when she started skipping school to protest outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm.
Her ‘School Strike for Climate’ and ‘Fridays for Future’ grew into a global youth movement which has helped inspire political change in climate policy.