Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg tore into world leaders at the United Nations today, telling them: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood.”
The 16-year-old campaigner was attending a UN Climate Summit ahead of the body’s General Assembly tomorrow.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to come to the conference with “concrete” plans on how to reduce emissions and hit tougher global warming targets.
And Donald Trump , a long-time climate sceptic who had not been expected to attend the session, sat in for around 10 minutes alongside Vice President Mike Pence.
Ms Thunberg, the figurehead of the Climate Strike movement which saw children around the world leave school to protest last Friday, opened her speech with an angry condemnation of world leaders for failing to get to grips with climate change.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you," she said.
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Boris Johnson said ahead of the conference that he hopes to bring President Trump to the table on climate change.
He said: “I will be making the point to President Trump that I have made many times before that we must tackle climate change together and we must tackle the loss of species together.”
In his opening remarks, Mr Guterres said: “Nature is angry. And we fool ourselves if we think we can fool nature, because nature always strikes back, and around the world nature is striking back with fury.”
