"They certainly drove us to speed up" efforts to change policy, said Merkel at a press conference while nearby in the German capital the 16-year-old Swedish activist addressed the latest "Fridays for Future" rally. Thunberg, meanwhile, addressing student activists who have regularly skipped school to protest, made another passionate appeal to their elders to urgently act on climate change. Weather 'unsettling people'Climate change has become a top public concern in Germany, with the opposition Greens party shooting up to poll neck-and-neck with Merkel's conservatives earlier this year. Merkel said that Germany's recent "exceptional weather conditions" were "unsettling people and showing the cost of non-action or insufficient action" to combat the problem. But she said that this was forcing her party "to show that we are meeting our climate change targets, yet are also committed to innovation and committed to economic progress".

Source: The Local July 19, 2019 12:00 UTC