World leaders out of excuses on climate change Thunberg youth activists say

JOHANNESBURG: The world's children cannot afford more empty promises at this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), youth activists - including Greta Thunberg - said, after a UN report found virtually no child will escape the impact of global warming.

In the first index of its kind, published on Friday (Aug 20), UN children's agency UNICEF found that almost all the world's 2.2 billion children are exposed to at least one climate or environmental risk, from catastrophic floods to toxic air.

Last week a UN climate panel of the world's top atmospheric scientists warned that global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control, with deadly heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme events likely to keep getting worse.

Thunberg, 18, said the UNICEF index confirmed children would be the worst affected, and when world leaders meet in Glasgow in November for COP26 they needed to act rather than just talk.

"I don't expect them to do that, but I would be more than happy if they could prove me wrong," she told journalists ahead of the index's publication on the third anniversary of Fridays For Future, a now-global youth movement that started with her solo protest outside her Swedish school.

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