Greta Thunberg joins climate lawsuit against Sweden

Climate activist Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other youth activists in Stockholm on Friday to file a lawsuit against the Swedish government over its alleged inaction on climate change.

“Today on Black Friday is the perfect day to sue the state over its insufficient climate policies,” Thunberg said on Twitter. “So that’s what we did. See you in court!”

The 19-year-old was one of more than 600 young people who signed on to the lawsuit, which was organized and filed by the Swedish youth-led organization Aurora. The group marched to Stockholm District Court on Friday to file the suit.

“Sweden has never treated the climate crisis like a crisis,” Aurora spokesperson Anton Foley said in a statement, per The Associated Press. “Sweden is failing in its responsibility and breaking the law.”

The world’s leaders met in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, earlier this month to discuss the climate crisis at the United Nations’s COP27 conference. 

While the conference concluded on Sunday with an agreement to compensate developing countries for damage caused by climate change, some activists decried the lack of progress on the effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  

“Without any binding commitments to rapidly and immediately reduce greenhouse gases, the world stands no chance to deliver on the 1,5°C limit, and by doing so minimising risks of uprooting the life supporting systems we all depend on and endangering countless human lives,” Thunberg said in a tweet on Sunday.