Greta Thunberg received like a rock star in Glasgow, police have to escort her out

Greta Thunberg was received like a real rock star at the climate conference in Glasgow. The police had to escort her to the exit of the train station under great (media) interest.

The Swedish activist arrived by train from London around 6.40 pm local time yesterday. She was cheered loudly at the station. Together with some like-minded people, she then tried to make her way through the crowd.

Thunberg gave the fans a thumbs up, but the photographers could count on less understanding. When one of them asked if she was happy to be in Glasgow, her entourage reacted with pity. “Get a life”, it sounded, among other things.

There was also a fair amount of cursing involved. ‘Finally in Glasgow for the COP26. And thank you for the very warm welcome,’ it sounded in a tweet afterward.

In the run-up to the summit, the UN climate panel IPCC sounded the alarm: according to the scientists, the average temperature on Earth has increased by 1.09 degrees Celsius over the decade 2011-2020 compared to the pre-industrial era.

In the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, 195 countries agreed to keep global warming below 2 degrees, if possible even below 1.5 degrees. However, according to the most recent figures, current efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are insufficient to meet those targets.

‘We have just eight years to halve our greenhouse gas emissions and achieve a maximum global warming rate of 1.5 degrees,’ the United Nations Environment Program report said. With current plans, we would achieve a rise of 2.7 degrees by the end of the century.