"Our biggest compliment
yet!"
Swedish teen activist Greta
Thunberg turned to Twitter Thursday to thank a key fossil fuel leader for
suggesting that climate campaigners—including youth who have joined the global
"Fridays for Future" movement Thunberg
inspired with her school
strikesoutside Sweden's parliament last year—greatly threaten the oil
sector.
"Thank you!" tweeted
Thunberg, whose climate leadership earned her
a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. "Our biggest compliment
yet!"
Earlier this week, after a
meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in
Vienna, the organization's Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo reportedly claimed
that "unscientific" attacks by climate activists are "perhaps
the greatest threat to our industry going forward."
According to the Agence
France-Presse report which Thunberg linked to on Twitter:
Barkindo said that as extreme
weather events linked to the climate crisis became more common, "there is
a growing mass mobilization of world opinion... against oil."
"Civil society is being
misled to believe oil is the cause of climate change," he said.
...[H]e said children of some
colleagues at OPEC's headquarters "are asking us about their future
because... they see their peers on the streets campaigning against this
industry."
Barkindo added that the
"mobilization" against oil was "beginning to... dictate policies
and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry."
Although he did not mention
any specifics, Barkindo also said that "we believe this industry is part
of the solution to the scourge of climate change."
OPEC's mission "is to
coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its member countries and ensure
the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and
regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a
fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry."
The energy organization's 14
member nations are Algeria, Angola, Congo, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and
Venezuela.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of
the advocacy group 350.org, tweeted a
message to activists Thursday in response to the OPEC chief's remarks:
"Wow! Wow! Wow! ...Thanks everyone for your good work!"
Barkindo's comments come as
the youth movement—also commonly called #SchoolStrikeForClimate—is planning a
worldwide strike for September, and amid mounting research on how the fossil
fuel industry endangers the planet. A study published in
the journal Nature on Monday warned that existing dirty energy
infrastructure jeopardizes the Paris
climate agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5°C above
pre-industrial levels.
"The new study reiterates
that visionary climate solutions must justly transition away from fossil fuels,
starting with an acknowledgement that 1.5°C carbon budgets must account for
planned and new emitting projects," Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America
director for 350.org, said in
a statement Wednesday.
"This report reinforces
the need for complete economic restructuring by way of a Green New Deal that
creates millions of jobs for workers in a 100 percent renewable economy and
actively keeps fossil fuels in the ground," she added.
"We stand by the science,
and furthermore demand that fossil fuel billionaires pay for the damage they
have caused to people and planet."
