Just when it seemed that the clash between Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg was subsiding, the United States’ financial chief on Thursday told Swedish teen activist to go study before calling for a fossil fuel halt, prompting the climate campaigner to reply “it doesn’t “take a degree” to understand the science.”
The spat between US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Thunberg again highlighted the tensions over climate change at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where governments have come under pressure to act on global warming as well as talk about the issue.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reaffirmed his dire warnings about the risks of climate change, telling business leaders that the world was losing the war against global warming and urging rapid action to prevent humanity being “doomed”.
Steve Mnuchin dismissed Greta Thunberg's views on addressing climate change because she hadn't studied economics in college.
So I found a guy with three Harvard degrees and one from Stanford who shared her opinion. https://t.co/gmgRttvvEo
— Philip Bump (@pbump) January 24, 2020
Mnuchin had earlier advised Thunberg, who has been bitterly critical of US policy during her stay at Davos, to study economics before giving out lessons.
Asked about the 17-year-old’s demand for an immediate halt to investment in fossil fuels, he told reporters: “After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us.”
These comments are part of Trump administration’s narrative of deeming global warming a ‘hoax’ and deflecting all questions of concern on Climate Change.
But in a thread of tweets, Thunberg dismissed Mnuchin’s comments in a typically withering response.
“My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1.5 degrees carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up,” she wrote on twitter.
Read more: Thunberg vs Trump on Climate Change at World Economic Forum
“So either you tell us how to achieve this mitigation or explain to future generations and those already affected by the climate emergency why we should abandon our climate commitments,” she added.
Not winning this war
Guterres lamented the “lack of political will” to reach targets on climate change and urged a “meaningful shift of assets” from investments in polluting substances into the green economy.
“The planet will not be destroyed. What will be destroyed is our capacity to live in this planet,” he said.
“We need to act in order to make sure we are not doomed,” he said. “It is essential to recognise that climate change is an existential threat to us all.
“We are not winning this war and we absolutely must do it,” he said.
Greta Thunberg tells the world we should divest in fossil fuels at Davos and Mnuchin tries to demean her, saying she has no economics degree. The foreclosure king missed the point again-she's not talking about economics, she's trying to save the planet. https://t.co/uXBpnrJurX
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) January 23, 2020
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday also said in a keynote address that governments were obliged to act on the younger generation’s concerns over climate change.
In her speech to the forum, Merkel said that older politicians had to use the “positive manner and constructive impatience of young people”, who she said “have a completely different horizon” in terms of time.
She did not however in her speech mention Thunberg, who other than Britain’s Prince Charles has met relatively few top leaders at the forum.
We want this done now
In a speech on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump had castigated the “prophets of doom” and those that predicted a climate “apocalypse”, in comments widely seen as an attack on Thunberg who sat in the audience.
But either by accident or design, there was no meeting between Trump and Thunberg before the US leader left the Swiss ski resort on Wednesday declaring he would have “loved” to have met the climate activist, Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Read more: The economic cost of climate change in 2019
Thunberg at the forum had repeated her climate warnings in sometimes withering terms, hammering home in a speech that it was time to “panic” because “the house is burning”.
Notably she had called for an immediate halt to investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction and an end to fossil fuel subsidies
Asked by reporters about the debate spurred by teenaged Greta Thunberg over the economics of climate change, Mnuchin quipped: “Is she the chief economist?” And: “After she goes and studies economics in college, she can go back and explain that to us.”https://t.co/4Xc5mpRyNs
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 23, 2020
“We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now,” she said. Thunberg is to hold a “school strike” demonstration in Davos on Friday.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, told AFP during the forum that governments were still failing to act on climate change.
Read more: “US has never been closer with Pakistan,” says Trump; meets Pak PM Khan in Davos
Attending the summit was like being at a “crime scene where all of the criminals are right there in front of you,” she said.
“But these are the targets. These are the people who have to change.”
AFP with additional input from GVS News Desk