Greta Thunberg Arrives at COP31 Warning That 'Everything We Love Is at Stake'

Greta Thunberg walked into the U.N. climate talks in Antalya, Turkey, on Tuesday and wasted no time in saying what she thought of them. The annual proceedings, she told reporters on arrival, are hypocritical, and leaders should put people and the planet ahead of profits and power.

The COP31 conference is being held in the Turkish resort city after a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heat waves and floods. It also follows another energy shock caused by the Iran war.

Thunberg's main complaint was about who gets to host and who gets to be in the room. Every year, she said, host countries are handed a chance to whitewash themselves, and the negotiations are filled with lobbyists paid by the destructive industries that benefit from what she called an extremely violent status quo. She said political and economic systems have become incompatible with human nature. Climate change, she said, is threatening everything, and everything and everyone we love is at stake. She called for action that protects and benefits people rather than sacrificing the global majority and the planet so that a fortunate few can keep making unimaginable profits and holding geopolitical power.

The record of the hosts gives her argument some material. This year's co-hosts, Turkey and Australia, are promoting renewable energy and rooftop solar installations, yet both still depend heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal, for electricity. Previous hosts Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan are major oil producers.

Turkey's headline goal is global electrification: moving sectors such as transportation, buildings and heavy industry off fossil fuels and onto electricity. It wants electricity, ideally from sources like solar and wind, to make up 35% of global energy consumption by 2035, up from 23% today. Thunberg, who is expected to stay several days, did not dismiss such steps outright. She said that because the situation is so desperate, people have to take the victories they have and every positive sign they can get, in order to save as much as can still be saved.

This is her first climate summit since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, where she dismissed world leaders' promises as "blah, blah, blah." She rose to prominence in 2018, at age 15, when she began a solitary School Strike for Climate outside the Swedish Parliament. In 2022 she published The Climate Book, which sets out actions to address the crisis. She has won multiple awards and taken up other causes, including the Free Palestine movement; last year she was arrested in London while supporting hunger-striking pro-Palestinian activists, and more recently she backed French students protesting for more school resources. In 2024 she joined a protest in Georgia against Azerbaijan's hosting of COP29.

Her arrival excited many youth activists at the conference. Amber Turner, a 26-year-old fellow with the Alliance of Small Island States, said she hoped Thunberg's presence would remind people why the work began: to push for meaningful change and hold decision-makers accountable. Turner added that worsening climate impacts make it hard for young people to be sure of a safe future. Kamori Osthananda, a youth negotiator on Thailand's delegation, called the presence of such a headline activist symbolic and hoped it would pressure the COP to deliver real action and implementation. Qiyun Woo, a youth environmentalist from Singapore, called her presence powerful and said it adds to the calls of a generation inheriting the consequences, while noting that many other youth activists are on the ground fighting for their communities.

Protests at the conference have demanded more climate finance and criticized growing interest in nuclear energy. The talks in Antalya run until Nov. 20, and COP32 is scheduled for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November 2027.