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 spent her first moments there criticizing the event she had come to attend. She called the annual conference hypocritical, saying that every year the host country is handed a chance to whitewash its own record, and that the negotiations are crowded with lobbyists paid by the industries that profit from what she described as an extremely violent status quo.

She went further. Thunberg said political and economic systems have become incompatible with human nature, and that climate change is threatening everything. Everything and everyone we love, she said, is at stake. Governments, in her telling, should act to protect and benefit people instead of constantly sacrificing the global majority and the planet itself so a fortunate few can keep making unimaginable profits and holding geopolitical power.

The summit, COP31, is being held in the Turkish resort city of Antalya. It follows a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heat waves and floods, and another energy shock caused by the Iran war. It is co-hosted by Turkey and Australia, both of which promote renewable energy and rooftop solar installations. Both also still depend heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal, for electricity. Thunberg's point about hosts is not confined to this year: Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, who hosted previous summits, are all major oil producers.

A central goal for Turkey is global electrification, moving transportation, buildings and heavy industry away from fossil fuels and toward electricity. Turkey wants electricity, ideally from sources such as solar and wind, to make up 35% of global energy consumption by 2035, up from 23% today. Thunberg did not dismiss such efforts outright. We have to take the victories we have, she said, because the situation is so desperate that every positive sign matters if we are to save as much as can still be saved. She is expected to stay at COP31 for several days.

This is her first climate summit since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, where she dismissed world leaders' promises as "blah, blah, blah." She rose to prominence in 2018, when at 15 she began a solitary School Strike for Climate outside the Swedish parliament. In 2022 she published The Climate Book, which lays out actions to address the climate crisis. She has won multiple awards and has taken up other causes, including the Free Palestine movement; last year she was arrested in London while supporting hunger-striking pro-Palestinian activists. 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 drew excitement from young activists. 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, hold decision-makers accountable and work toward a better future. Worsening climate impacts, Turner added, make it hard for young people to be sure of a safe and thriving future.

Kamori Osthananda, a youth negotiator on Thailand's delegation, called the presence of such a headline activist symbolic and said he hoped it would pressure the conference 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 of these negotiations. Woo also noted that many other youth activists are on the ground fighting for their communities and homes. Separate protests at the summit have demanded more climate finance and criticized growing interest in nuclear energy.

The talks in Antalya run until Nov. 20. COP32 is scheduled for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November 2027. The question for the next ten days is whether the attention Thunberg and the youth delegates bring turns into commitments on implementation.