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Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks to AFP during an interview aboard La Vagabonde, the boat she will be taking to return to Europe, in Hampton, Virginia, on November 12, 2019. – Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg said November 12, 2019 that US President Donald Trump’s climate change denialism was “so extreme” that it had helped galvanize the movement to…
Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in Madrid on Friday to join thousands of other young people in a march to demand world leaders take real action against climate change.
After making it through a swarm of media cameras and microphones at the Spanish capital's northern train station, the Swedish teen posted an ironic tweet saying that she had “successfully managed to sneak into Madrid.”
"I don’t think anyone saw me...," she added. “Anyway it’s great to be in Spain!"
Madrid is hosting two-week, United Nations-sponsored talks aimed at streamlining the rules on global carbon markets and agreeing on how poor countries should be compensated for destruction largely caused by emissions from rich nations.
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Photos of parishioners, who were asked to send in pictures to represent them, are placed on empty seats due to the coronavirus at the Evangelical St. Pankratius church on Easter Monday, April 13, 2020, in Hamm, Germany. Believers in Germany still can not celebrate services at the closed churches, mosques and synagogues because of the virus outbreak.
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Rev. William Schipper, pastor of Mary, Queen of the Rosary Parish, left, wears a mask and gloves out of concern for the coronavirus as he sprinkles holy water and blesses parishioners who remain in their vehicles in the parking lot of the church, on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020, in Spencer, Massachusetts. Churches needed to get creative in an age of social distancing for Easter, going as far as to host drive-through masses and streaming services on the web.
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Sylvia Salley looks at the remains of her sister’s storm-damaged home April 13, 2020, in Livingston, South Carolina. A string of storms caused more than a dozen deaths across the southern United States.
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The Wimbledon brand as seen at The All England Tennis and Croquet Club, April 1, 2020, in London, England. Wimbledon was cancelled for the first time since World War II on Wednesday, as countries around the world grapple with outbreaks of COVID-19 cases at home and abroad. Wimbledon was scheduled to play June 29 to July 12.
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Members of Samaritans’s Purse put the finishing touches on a field hospital in New York’s Central Park on March 30, 2020, in New York City. The group plans to open a 68-bed field hospital specifically equipped to serve as a respiratory care unit as New York grapples with tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases.
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The USNS Comfort medical ship moves up the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty as it arrives on March 30, 2020, in New York. The military hospital ship arrived Monday as America’s coronavirus epicenter prepares to fight the peak of the pandemic that has killed over 2,500 people across the US. It will treat non-virus-related patients, helping to ease the burden of hospitals overwhelmed by the crisis.
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Italian doctors and nurses pose for portraits during a break or at the end of their shifts in Rome, Bergamo and Brescia, Italy, March 27, 2020. The intensive care doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy are often almost unrecognizable behind their masks, scrubs, gloves and hairnets.
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A forest fire burns on a hill north of Mexico City, Saturday, March 28, 2020–one of several to burn in the hills surrounding Mexico City for the past two days.
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A man looks toward the skyline from Bernal Heights Hill in San Francisco, March 16, 2020. Officials in six San Francisco Bay Area counties issued a shelter-in-place mandate Monday affecting nearly 7 million people, including the city of San Francisco itself. The order says residents must stay inside and venture out only for necessities for three weeks starting Tuesday in a desperate attempt by officials to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
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Trader Gregory Rowe, center, and others work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, March 16, 2020. Monday’s close saw the worst loss for Wall Street in 30 years over fears of the coronavirus outbreak grinding economies to a halt.
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Neal Browning receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, March 16, 2020, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. Browning is the second patient to receive the shot in the study.
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A police officer checks temperatures as part of precautionary measures against the spread of the new coronavirus in Manila, Philippines, March 16, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. For some, it can cause more severe illness, especially in older adults and people with existing health problems.
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Rescuers search for victims at the site of a hotel collapse in Quanzhou, China, March 8, 2020. The death toll rose to 20 on Tuesday after the collapse of the Chinese hotel that was being used to isolate people who had arrived from other parts of China hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak. Ten people are still missing.
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Medical professionals pose for photos as the last batch of COVID-19 patients are discharged from the Wuchang Fang Cang makeshift hospital, March 10, 2020, in Wuhan, China. The city has closed 11 temporary hospitals as the number of patients dropped.
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The Grand Princess is held off the coast of San Francisco, March 8, 2020. The city is prepared to receive the thousands of people aboard the ship, 21 of whom tested positive for the coronavirus, on Monday.
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Inmates stage a protest on the roof of the San Vittore prison in Milan against new rules made to cope with the coronavirus crisis, including the suspension of relatives’ visits, March 9, 2020. Italy took a page from China’s playbook Sunday, attempting to lock down 16 million people — more than a quarter of its population — for nearly a month to halt the relentless march of the new coronavirus across Europe.
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A police officer stands behind her riot shield covered in red paint during an International Women’s Day march in Mexico City’s main square, the Zocalo, Sunday, March 8, 2020. Protests against gender violence in Mexico have intensified in recent years amid an increase in killings of women and girls.
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Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, right, and his wife Jill attend a primary election night rally Tuesday, March 3, 2020, in Los Angeles. Biden won 9 states on Super Tuesday with one race still too close to call.
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Two men look at damage Tuesday, March 3, 2020, in Cookeville, Tenn. after a tornado hit on Monday night.
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From left: former Mayor of South Bend Pete Buttigieg, Rev. Al Sharpton, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren walk together over the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 1, 2020, in Selma, Alabama. Some of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates attended a Selma bridge crossing jubilee ahead of Super Tuesday.
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A person is taken by a stretcher to a waiting ambulance from a nursing facility where more than 50 people are sick and being tested for the COVID-19 virus, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020, in Kirkland, Washington. Two patients stricken with the coronavirus died in Washington state, health officials said.
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Hostages walk out at the V-Mall in Manila, Philippines, March 2, 2020, after a day-long hostage crisis. Officials say a recently dismissed security guard entered the mall with a pistol and grenades and took dozens of mall employees hostage. The suspect, identified as Archie Paray, was allowed to speak to the media before he was arrested.
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Police respond to reports of an active shooting at the Molson Coors Brewing Co. campus in Milwaukee, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. Five people died when a 51-year-old former employee opened fire at the plant before killing himself, authorities said.
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Supporters of ousted President Hosni Mubarak hold posters with his photograph near the cemetery where he will be buried, in the Heliopolis neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. Egypt held a full-honors military funeral for Mubarak, who was ousted from power in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Mubarak, 91, died Tuesday at a Cairo military hospital from heart and kidney complications.
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Lori Vallow appears in court in Lihue, Hawaii, Feb. 26, 2020. A judge ruled that bail will remain at $5 million for Vallow, also known as Lori Daybell, who was arrested in Hawaii over the disappearance of her two children in Idaho.
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Women wearing a respiratory mask walks across Piazza del Duomo in central Milan, Feb. 23, 2020. Tens of thousands of Italians prepared for a weeks-long quarantine in the country’s north as 219 people tested positive for coronavirus, making Italy the site of the highest number of cases outside Asia.
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Carnival revellers crowd at the roadside and watch a float depicting the “carnival virus” making a fool of the coronavirus during the Rose Monday carnival street parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, Feb. 24, 2020.
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President Donald Trump, with first lady Melania Trump, tour the Taj Mahal, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, in Agra, India. This is the first official visit to India for the Trumps. See more photos here.
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Members of the press surrounds an unidentified passenger after he disembarked from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Feb. 19, 2020, in Yokohama, Japan. Passengers that tested negative for COVID-19 were allowed to disembark Wednesday after a 14-day quarantine.
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Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com delivery workers prepare for the morning round of deliveries from a distribution center in Beijing, China, Feb. 18, 2020. JD and rivals including Pinduoduo, Miss Fresh and Alibaba Group’s Hema are scrambling to fill a boom in orders while protecting employees. E-commerce is one of the few industries to thrive after anti-virus controls starting in late January closed factories, restaurants, cinemas, offices and shops nationwide and extinguished auto and real estate sales.
An official directly involved in the negotiations said that despite a few setbacks, the technical negotiations were progressing, although many issues were being left for ministerial-level meetings in the summit's second and final week.
The official, who asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the discussions, added that a political declaration on greater “ambition" — a buzzword at the summit — was shaping to be “difficult to achieve.”
“A summit that doesn’t end with enhanced ambition would be something that nobody would understand if we take into account what the streets and science are telling us,” the official said.
The talks came as evidence mounts about disasters that could ensue from further global warming, including a study commissioned by 14 seafaring nations and published Friday predicting that unchecked climate change could devastate fishery industries and coral reef tourism.
Thunberg paid a surprise visit to the venue of the talks and joined a group of some 40 teens staging a sit-in there to demand real action against climate change.
Holding hands, the teens sang a version of John Lennon's “Power To the People” and displayed banners with the logo of Fridays for Future, the global climate movement inspired by Thunberg.
In the presence of dozens of media cameras and curious summit participants, the protesters exchanged chants: “What do you want?” “Climate Justice” “When do you want it?" “Now!”
Thunberg did not appear unsettled by the commotion surrounding her presence.
"It's absurd. I laugh at it. I do not understand why it has become like this," the 16-year-old was quoted as saying by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, whose reporter rode with them in an electric car in Madrid.
“I don't like being at the center of the focus all the time, but this is a good thing,” she told Aftonbladet. "As soon as the media writes about me, they also have to write about the climate crisis. If this is a way to write about the climate crisis, then I guess it is good.”
While Thunberg seemed bemused by the attention, her father Svante was startled, saying it was “total madness.”
“I have never seen anything like this,” he told Aftonbladet.
The study commissioned by seafaring nations says climate change could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses by 2050, adding that limiting global warming would lessen the economic impact for coastal countries, but that they also need to adapt to ocean changes.
The authors said fish will migrate to cooler waters as oceans heat up and become more acidic, jeopardizing some fishing communities. While regions near the equator will suffer fish stock declines, the report forecasts increases in Arctic and Antarctic Oceans
Demands for greater action by non-governmental organizations and a whole new generation of environment-minded activists were expected to take the spotlight with the presence of Thunberg in Madrid.
Past appearances have won her plaudits from some leaders — and criticism from others who’ve taken offense at the angry tone of her speeches.
An advocate for carbon-free transportation, Thunberg traveled by train overnight from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, where she arrived earlier this week after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the United States by catamaran.
That became necessary after a sudden change of venue for the COP25 summit following a wave of anti-government protests that hit Chile, the original host.
Separately Friday, an alliance of American states, cities, academic institutions and companies opened its own venue at the U.N. climate talks, aiming to show that despite the federal administration's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accord, many Americans remain committed to the treaty's goal of curbing global warming.
Elan Strait, who manages the “We Are Still In" initiative for the environmental conservationist World Wildlife Fund, said the movement is “a short-term band-aid not only to get those carbon dioxide emissions down but also to encourage policymakers to lay the ground for further achievements.”
“And that, regardless of the color of the government that is in power,” Strait said.
Over 3,800 organizations and corporations representing 70% of U.S. economic output have joined the coalition, organizers claim, amounting to roughly half of the country's emissions.
The U.S. Climate Action Center is hosting Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin; Pat Brown, the chief executive of non-meat burger company Impossible Foods; Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh; and others.
The venue is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charitable organization founded by billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is now seeking the Democratic nomination to run in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
