Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is back at a UN climate summit after five years, at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey. In an interview with Samakal's Zahidur Rahman on the sidelines, she said the summits have turned into "a circus of greenwashing", meaning that participants present themselves as environmentally friendly without being so.
Although she stayed away for five years, she said, the crisis did not pause; it deepened. Each year there is a summit and there are pledges, but action does not match them. Host countries get to present themselves as green, and lobbyists from industries whose business harms the environment take part in the talks. COP alone cannot stop climate breakdown, she said; effective action is needed inside and outside the summits.
Asked why there has been so little progress on cutting fossil fuels, she said the interests and profits of that sector shape decision-making. Pledges alone solve nothing without the political will to carry them out. World leaders' greatest failure, in her words, is that instead of putting people's safety and wellbeing first, most people and the planet are being sacrificed so that a few can keep enormous profits and geopolitical power.
Samakal asked what she would say to people in countries like Bangladesh, which has done little to cause climate change but is among the most vulnerable, with coastal communities facing cyclones, sea-level rise, salinity and displacement. Thunberg said those least responsible are often hit hardest, which is why climate justice has to be addressed: their lives and futures must not be sacrificed for others' profit and power, and the safety of people on the front line must come first.
Asked whether a solution is possible within the current economic and political system, she said she is personally not interested in being part of it and wants to build something different; if profit and power come first, she argued, people, nature and the future will keep being ignored. Young people are speaking out, she said, because they see their future being taken away in front of them, and they want real action rather than promises.
On whether years of campaigning without the change they want bring despair, she said a great deal has been accepted from those in power, but it is not too late to say no, nor to resist and build something different. The interview was conducted by Samakal's Zahidur Rahman. The photograph was taken in Stockholm in 2024, not in Antalya.
Photo: Frankie Fouganthin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Source: Samakal
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