“Young people are demanding witnesses,” Laurence Tubiana, director of the European Climate Foundation, told franceinfo on Friday. “It’s hard not to hear from young people who decide to strike,” added Adélaïde Charlier, a young Belgian activist and co-founder of the “Youth for Climate” movement.
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The “Youth for Climate” and “Fridays for Future” movements are “the best news we could have for the climate”, estimates on franceinfo Friday October 29 Laurence Tubiana, director of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), before the opening of the COP26 in Glasgow, Sunday.
It is according to her it is “thanks to these movements that there have been judgments at the German Constitutional Court, in the Netherlands, in France. They said to the government: be serious”, explains Laurence Tubiana. “We need citizens, this is the only way that governments, businesses, mayors of big cities are accountable, and be serious. “ According to her, the COP26 in Glasgow is the moment when they must be serious: “We stop telling stories and we do things “, and” young people are demanding witnesses “.
Among these demanding witnesses, Adélaïde Charlier, young Belgian activist and co-founder of the “Youth for Climate” movement: “It’s hard not to hear young people who decide to strike, to shout in the streets, who decide to take all possible platforms to convey an important message”. She said to herself “convinced that citizen mobilization has already been at the origin of many changes over the past two years. We must absolutely continue to put the pressure on”.
Adélaïde Charlier who is going to the COP26 in Glasgow does not expect one “a radical change” but that “political leaders take climate change seriously, until it becomes an emergency”. It is besides with this feeling, “this spirit of gravity” who will live more or less the participants, negotiators and heads of state present in Glasgow that Laurence Tubiana will judge of the success or not of the great climate conference.
The climate ambitions currently presented by all the countries of the world are leading to global warming of the order of 2.7 to 3 degrees, recalls Adélaïde Charlier, far from the promises made when the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. “I’m going with this message: keep your promises”, she says, waiting to see after COP26 whether governments “take action” beyond speeches.