Greta Thunberg Aarives At COP31, Says Climate Talks Alone Cannot Stop Disaster
The Swedish activist said the talks could decide the fate of countless people. She also said decades of summits have not stopped emissions from going up.
ANTALYA, Turkey, Nov 10 – Greta Thunberg arrived at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya and spoke to reporters that the negotiations were a matter of life and death, though she said she did not expect this year’s meeting to be much different from previous ones.
The Swedish activist made the remarks as she entered the venue, where officials from nearly 200 countries began two weeks of talks on Monday.
“This is a matter of life and death,” she said.
She said the things being discussed and decided in the meeting rooms could be a death sentence for a huge number of people. Then she pointed out that this is the 31st of these summits, and said it will most likely end the same way the others did.
But she said people must continue to fight. In her words, they need to prevent every disaster that can be prevented and protect every life that can be protected.
She was also clear that she does not believe the summits are enough. She said climate disasters are already here, and that decades of meetings have been filled with talk while emissions have continued to rise. She said the world is passing tipping points right now that cannot be reversed and are beyond human control.
It was a familiar message from Thunberg, who has spent much of her adult life telling world leaders that they are moving too slowly.
She was 15 when she began her activism. In August 2018, she skipped school and sat alone outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, holding a sign that read “School strike for climate.”
Other students soon joined her, first in Sweden and then in countries around the world. The walkouts took place on Fridays, giving rise to the movement known as Fridays for Future. By 2019, millions of young people were taking part in its marches worldwide.
That same year, she crossed the Atlantic by sailboat to attend a United Nations climate meeting in New York. In her speech, she accused world leaders of failing young people, and footage of her remarks was shared widely around the globe.
She has had a mixed relationship with the summits ever since. She went to COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and said much of what she heard was empty talk. A year later, she stayed away from COP27 in Egypt and said the meetings had become a way for leaders and companies to polish their image.
Her protests have also gone beyond climate. She has joined campaigns against coal mining and against wind farms built on Indigenous land in Norway. In 2025, she sailed with boats that tried to bring aid to Gaza, and Israeli forces stopped the boats and deported her.
This year’s summit is being held in Turkey, but Australia is running the formal talks under a deal the two countries reached after both wanted to host. The United States, under President Donald Trump, is not sending a team. World leaders are due to arrive for their own two-day meeting starting on Wednesday.
The two big fights are over fossil fuels and money. Some countries want a firm plan to move away from oil, gas and coal, while oil-producing states have long pushed back. Poorer countries say they need much more help from rich ones to deal with floods, storms and heat.
The United Nations says the world has already gone past the goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the level seen before the industrial age. It says deep and fast cuts in emissions could still bring temperatures back down by the end of the century.
The talks are set to end on November 20.
