DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 19 (Portal) – Greta Thunberg called on the global energy industry and its financiers to end all investments in fossil fuels at a high-level meeting in Davos on Thursday with the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
During a roundtable discussion with Fatih Birol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, activists said they had presented CEOs with a cease and desist letter demanding a halt to new oil, gas and coal production.
“As long as they can get away with it, they’re going to keep investing in fossil fuels, they’re going to keep throwing people under the bus,” Thunberg warned.
The oil and gas industry, accused by activists of hijacking the climate debate in the Swiss ski resort, has said it must be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the energy mix as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy .
Thunberg, who was arrested by police in Germany earlier this week during a demonstration at a coal mine, met with activists Helena Gualinga from Ecuador, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda and Luisa Neubauer from Germany to talk to Birol about how the big problems are being tackled speak.
Birol, whose agency makes policy recommendations on energy, thanked activists for the meeting but insisted the transition must involve a mix of stakeholders, especially given the global energy security crisis.
The IEA chief, who met with some of the biggest names in the oil and gas industry in Davos earlier Thursday, said there was no reason to justify investment in new oil fields because of the energy crisis and said until they become operational would climate crisis would be worse.
He also said he was less pessimistic than climate activists about the clean energy transition.
“We may have a slight legitimate optimism,” he said, adding, “Last year the amount of renewable energy entering the market was record-breaking.”
However, he acknowledged that the transition is not happening fast enough and warned that emerging and developing countries risk being left behind if advanced economies do not support the transition.
Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg attends on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland April 19 , 2023. Portal/Arnd Wiegmann
‘REAL MONEY’
The United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Egypt last year set up a Loss and Damage Fund to compensate the countries hardest hit by climate change events.
Nakate, who held a lone protest outside Uganda’s parliament for several months in 2019, said the fund was “still an empty bucket with no money whatsoever”.
“It takes real money for losses and damages”.
In 2019, Thunberg, then 16, attended the main meeting of the WEF and famously told leaders that “our house is on fire”. The following year she returned to Davos.
But she declined to attend as an official delegate this year as the event returned to its usual January slot.
When asked why she didn’t want to advocate for change from within, Thunberg said there are already activists who would.
“I think it should be front line people and not privileged people like me,” she said. “I don’t think the changes we need are very likely to come from within. They tend to come from the bottom up.”
The activists later walked together through the snowy streets of Davos, where many of the shops were temporarily converted into company- or country-sponsored “pavilions.”
For daily Davos updates in your inbox, sign up for the Portal Daily Briefing here.
writing by Leela de Kretser; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.