German Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded recently that her government was driven to act faster on climate change by young activists like teenaged Greta Thunberg, who was speaking at rally in Berlin the same day.
“They certainly drove us to speed up” efforts to change policy, said Merkel at a press conference while nearby in the German capital the 16-year-old Swedish activist addressed the latest “Fridays for Future” rally.
“The seriousness with which Greta, but also many, many other young people, are telling us that this is about their lives, and that their life spans extend further, has led us to approach the matter more resolutely,” said Merkel.
She said that her cabinet planned to decide on key steps for a new climate law, including a likely carbon pricing mechanism, at a September 20 meeting.
Thunberg, meanwhile, addressing student activists who have regularly skipped school to protest, made another passionate appeal to their elders to urgently act on climate change.
“We need to make sure that people save the world and save humankind,” she said about global warming which is melting ice caps and glaciers, raising ocean levels and exacerbating extreme weather events.
