Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg is not planning to attend the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) expected to take place in Glasgow, Scotland this coming November, and believes the conference should be postponed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, BBC News reports.
COP26, hosted by the UK government, will be the first major climate conference Thunberg hasn't attended since her first climate protest outside Sweden's parliament in 2018.
The Swedish activist took to Twitter to further explain her position on the matter. She pointed out how some countries are now vaccinating healthy young people while across the world at-risk groups and frontline workers are yet to receive the jab.
Thunberg stressed that vaccine nationalism won’t solve the pandemic and that "global problems need global solutions".
The parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis are notable, exposing access to solutions based on socio-economic factors and revealing inequality is rife. Vaccine nationalism was one of the major threats identified by the World Health Organization last year in the fight against COVID. It has been in the news again recently as reports revealed the US and the UK (among the most prolific vaccinators and world's wealthiest nations) had not exported a single dose of vaccines produced in their countries.
While calling for COP26 to be postponed, Thunberg stated that the urgent action required to tackle the climate crisis doesn’t need to wait for the conference but can start right now.
[H/T: BBC News]