Greta Thunberg calls COP a "two-week long celebration of business as usual, and blah, blah, blah." at Fridays for Future rally

An estimated 25,000 people joined a Fridays for Future protest in Glasgow on Friday November 5. People from all ages, but especially youth and students.

Greta Thunberg marched with the crowd and made a speech to the Fridays for Future Rally on November 5 in which she argued those leaders inside the COP were just engaged in Greenwashing, that it is largely a PR event, a "two-week long celebration of business as usual, and blah, blah, blah."

"The people in power can continue to live in their bubble filled with ... fantasies like eternal growth on a finite planet and technological solutions that will suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere and will erase all of these crises just like that," she said. "Leaders are not leading."

“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve the crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place,” Greta Thunberg said, speaking on stage shortly after a strike organized by “Fridays For Future” saw thousands march 2 kilometres from Kelvingrove Park to George Park in Glasgow’s city center.

“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve the crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place,” Thunberg said.

“The COP has turned into a PR event, where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.”

Thunberg told the crowd that COP26 had been described as “the most exclusionary COP ever,” 

"COP26 has been named the most exclusionary COP ever," she said at the rally, "This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global North greenwash festival, a two-week long celebration of business as usual, and blah, blah, blah." 

Here is Greta's Thunberg speech to a Fridays for Future protest on Friday November 5, in Glasgow:

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Climate activist @GretaThunberg addresses crowd at #FridaysForFuture protest during #COP26 pic.twitter.com/2wpM9GN4ZM

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 5, 2021

Watch the livestream of the Fridays for Future march, rally and speeches on November 5