Greta Thunberg issues ‘emergency alert’ video, calling out ‘bulls***’ on emissions pledges

Fossil fuel targets will not go far enough and depend on unproven technologies, Thunberg says in Earth Day video

Greta Thunberg has issued an “emergency alert for the general public” in which she has said the climate targets countries lay out this year are likely to be insufficient, and based on non-existent carbon removal technologies.

"Let’s call out their bulls***,” she says in the video which she published on Twitter on Earth Day and ahead of the opening of the US leaders’ summit on the climate crisis.

Joe Biden’s administration has announced it will cut carbon dioxide emissions to half of what they were in 2005 by 2030.

In her video, Thunberg says: “At the leaders’ summit countries will present their new climate commitments, like ‘net zero emissions by 2050’. They will call these hypothetical targets ‘ambitious’. But when you compare our insufficient targets with the overall current best available science, you clearly see there’s a gap. There are decades missing.

“Of course we welcome all efforts to safeguard present and future living conditions, and these targets could be a great start, if it wasn’t for the fact they are full of gaps and loopholes.”

She says these omissions and loopholes include countries failing to count the emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping and the burning of biomass.

She also says – while a pink unicorn floats across the screen – that many countries’ targets are “completely relying on future, fantasy-scaled, currently barely-existing, negative emissions technologies”.

“We can keep cheating in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what’s needed, but while we can fool others – and even ourselves – we cannot fool nature and physics. The emissions are still there, whether we choose to count them or not,” she says.

“The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention in becoming more and more absurd. And the gap between our so-called climate targets and the overall best available science should no longer be possible to ignore.

She describes this gap as “the biggest elephant that has ever found itself in any room”, and says unless we address this, we cannot make any real changes”.

“Let’s call out their bulls***,” she adds.

Thunberg is addressing the US congress later on Thursday.