President Trump has denied knowing “anything about” teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Trump spoke to the Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Trump attended the summit to give a speech about the strength of the U.S. economy and to slam climate change’s “perennial prophets of doom.”
“I don’t really know anything about her,” Trump said, adding that she’s “very angry.”
Thunberg, 17, also attended the forum at Davos and urged attendees to stop using fossil fuels completely.
“Until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net-zero. We need real zero,” Thunberg said, adding that countries should stop all subsidies to and divest from all fossil fuel ventures. “We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030, or even 2021. We want this done now.”
Thunberg also hit Trump and the United States for ditching the Paris Climate Accords. The accords were a nonbinding resolution to limit carbon emissions across the globe.
“The fact that the USA is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should. But the fact that we’re all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least,” Thunberg said.
In his speech, Trump slammed climate activists as “radical socialists” who “want to see us do badly” and “eradicate our liberty.”
“We must reject the perennial prophets of doom: They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers,” Trump said.
