Petition From 14 Youth Leaders Says UN Must ‘Declare a Systemwide Climate Emergency’

A group of 14 youth climate leaders including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg filed a legal petition on Wednesday imploring the United Nations to “declare a systemwide climate emergency,” a push that came amid growing anger over the milquetoast pledges emerging from the COP26 summit.

“The United Nations connects the entire world together, and we need global action on the climate crisis.”

“The climate emergency—which threatens every person on the planet into the foreseeable future—is at least as serious a threat as a global pandemic and similarly requires urgent international action,” reads the petition, which was also signed by U.S. climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor, Ridhima Pandey of India, and Ranton Anjain and Litokne Kabua of the Marshall Islands.

The petition specifically urges U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres—who for years has warned that climate change poses an “existential threat” to humanity—and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) to deem the planetary crisis a “Level