Arrival marks first UN climate summit appearance since 2021 Glasgow meeting
Greta Thunberg arrived at the COP31 venue in Antalya, Turkey, on Tuesday, beginning her first appearance at a United Nations climate summit since the 2021 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. The prominent climate activist was expected to participate in this year’s talks for a few days.
This year’s meeting, called the Conference of the Parties, or COP31, comes after a year of climate-induced heat waves and other disasters. Speaking to reporters as she arrived, Thunberg said climate change is “threatening everything” and that “everything and everyone we love is at stake.”
“We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we are all living on, for a fortunate few to keep making unimaginable profits and maintaining geopolitical power,” Thunberg said.
She said structural changes are needed across the world to deal with the climate crisis because current political and economic systems “have become incompatible with human nature.”
Thunberg’s appearance marks her first United Nations climate summit since the 2021 COP in Glasgow, where she dismissed promises made by global leaders as “blah, blah, blah.”
In 2024, Thunberg participated in a protest rally in Georgia against Azerbaijan hosting that year’s climate talks. She accused Azerbaijan of using the summit to “greenwash their crimes and human rights abuses.”
Those earlier episodes both involved public criticism of climate summits: first, promises by global leaders; later, Azerbaijan’s use of the meeting. In her COP31 remarks, Thunberg framed the stakes as protecting people and the planet rather than preserving profits and geopolitical power for a fortunate few.