Now Greta turns on Joe! Teen eco-warrior calls Biden a hypocrite for his Build Back Better plan – which she says is NOT investing in green tech
Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has mocked President Joe Biden over his promises to tackle climate change via his 'Build Back Better' plan.
During a climate rally in Berlin on Friday, she took the American president to task over comments he had made during an address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier in the week.
'As we move out of the pandemic, many are talking about using this as an opportunity for a green sustainable recovery, whatever that means,' 18-year-old Thunberg said.
'World leaders are talking about 'building back better,' promising green investments and setting vague and distant climate targets in order to say that they are taking climate action,' she added.
'When you look at what we are actually investing the money in — the money that is supposed to be building back better — it shows the hypocrisy of our leaders,' Thunberg said.
'We can still turn this around,' she said to cheers. 'We demand change, and we are the change.'
During a climate rally in Berlin on Friday, Greta Thunberg took the American president to task over comments he had made during an address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier in the week
Biden has promised to work with Congress to double funds by 2024 to $11.4 billion per year to help developing nations deal with climate change
On Tuesday, Biden said the United States would double its financial contributions in order to help developing nations combat and adapt to climate change.
He explained the 'Build Back Better' agenda to include initiatives to help reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and had the potential to include 'sustainable investment in projects' overseas. 'That's the idea behind the Build Back Better World,' Biden noted.
Biden promised to work with Congress to double funds by 2024 to $11.4 billion per year to help developing nations deal with climate change.
The funding would help achieve a global goal set more than a decade ago of $100 billion per year to support climate action in vulnerable countries by 2030.
'The best part is, making these ambitious investments isn't just good climate policy, it's a chance for each of our countries to invest in ourselves and our own future,' Biden told the annual gathering of world leaders.
But Thunberg appeared to be unconvinced by Biden's pledge.
'The fact that we are in a crisis that we cannot build, buy or invest or way out of seems to create some kind of collective mental short-circuit among the people in power,' Thunberg said. 'And the longer they pretend that we can solve the climate crisis within today's system, the more invaluable time we will lose.
'It has been a very strange year and a half with this pandemic. But of course, the climate crisis has not disappeared,' she continued.
'It's the opposite - it's even more urgent now than it was before.'
In Berlin, the participants marched through the government district of the German capital at a climate protection demonstration
More than 100,000 people attended the 'Fridays for Future' protest in Berlin, Germany
'It's quite easy to understand why the world's top emitters of CO2 and the biggest producers of fossil fuels want to make it seem like they're taking sufficient climate action with fancy speeches. The fact that they still get away with it is another matter,' she also wrote on Twitter.
The International Energy Agency who work with countries around the world to shape energy policies say only 2 percent of governments' recovery spending has been allocated to clean energy.
The money falls well below what is needed to achieve international climate goals including net-zero emissions by 2050 or striving to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
An analysis by the World Resources Institute shows that even with the U.S. increasing its climate aid commitment to $11.4 billion by 2024, it pales in comparison to the $24.5 billion that the EU spent on climate aid in 2019.
Activist gather for a Fridays for Future global climate strike in front of the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, Germany
The United Nations said last week that countries' commitments would see global emissions increase to be 16% higher in 2030 than they were in 2010 - far off the 45% reduction by 2030 needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Biden's commitment comes less than six weeks before the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Core elements of his climate change agenda remain tied to the fate of infrastructure and budget legislation under intense negotiation in Congress, raising the risk that he could arrive at the summit empty handed.
Global leaders, including Biden, are expected to attend to draw up a solid plan to combat climate change.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joins a Fridays for Future global climate strike in Berlin
People protest for the climate during a climate strike in Germany on Friday
