Published 14:30 IST, January 22nd 2020
Greta Thunberg says 'planting trees is not enough' as Trump joins initiative
Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg slammed the United States President Donald Trump's statement of joining the 'One Trillion Trees' initiative.
Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg went against the United States President Donald Trump's statement of joining the 'One Trillion Trees' initiative. Even though the initiative aims at planting trees all over the world in order to tackle the environmental crisis, Thunberg said at 50th meet of World Economic Forum in Davos that “planting trees is not enough.” She further added that even though it is a good deed to plant more trees, the ongoing use of coal and fossil fuels are not helping the cause.
Thunberg said at WEF, “We're not telling you to offset your emissions by paying someone to plant trees in somewhere like Africa, while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate.”
She further added, “Planting trees is good of course, but it's nowhere near enough of what is needed and it cannot replace real mitigation...My generation will not give up without a fight...Our house is still on fire.”
Trump rejected warning by activists
Trump received rapturous applause when he announced that America would join the tree initiative. However, he rejected warnings by climate activists and called them 'prophets of doom' in the keynote speech. The climate change sceptic US leader also said 'fear and doubt is not a good thought process'.
Despite the concerns about increasing emissions of greenhouse gases that are widely responsible for drastic climate change, Trump even praised US for producing the world's largest amount of natural gas. On the contrary, when the US President was asked about environmental issues, he replied saying, 'environment is very important to me'. Most of Trump's initial part of the speech included him praising America on domestic economic policies.
The 17-year-old climate activist said that the richer countries need to get down to zero emissions much faster. She also added that the leaders are not doing anything to deal with the climate emergency. Thunberg further warned them that the time was running out and without treating it as real crisis one cannot solve the issue.
Updated 14:30 IST, January 22nd 2020