Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has returned to Sweden after a week in Glasgow for the UN climate summit.

Ms Thunberg has been highly critical of the COP26 talks that are beginning their second and final week, with countries under pressure to increase action to cut emissions to avoid dangerous warming and provide finance for poorer nations to cope with climate impacts.

The 18-year-old activist, who inspired the youth climate strike movement with her one-person school protest starting in 2018, was not invited to formally address the COP26 conference.

She told young protesters at a march on Friday that the UN talks were “now a global north greenwash festival, a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah” and branded it a failure.

It is understood she left Glasgow at the weekend and travelled by train back to Stockholm.

According to the PA News agency, Ms Thunberg was off school last week due to the autumn break and had decided to attend only the first week of the COP26 conference to avoid missing too many days of school.

She returned to school back in August last year after a “gap year” of climate activism.

Speaking on Friday, she cleared COP26 a “greenwash festival” as she addressed thousands of young climate activists in Glasgow.

The environmental campaigner told the crowd that the climate summit has been a “failure”.

 

She said: “This is no longer a climate conference.

“This is now a global north greenwash festival, a two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah.

“The most affected people in the most affected areas still remain unheard and the voices of future generations are drowning in their greenwash and empty words and promises.

“But the facts do not lie. And we know that our emperors are naked.”

 

Ms Thunberg added: “The question we must now ask ourselves is, what is it that we are fighting for? Are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet? Or are we fighting to maintain business as usual?

“Our leaders say that we can have both, but the harsh truth is that that is not possible in practice.”

Ms Thunberg had been expected to address the 100,000-strong rally in Glasgow on Saturday, but did not appear as it was understand she wanted to give space to other speakers as she had spoken at Friday’s event.