Five Years to Quit Fossil Fuels or Humanity Is Wiped Out
Tweet Gives Humanity Five Years to Quit Fossil Fuels. The Tweet Didn't Make It to Year Six.
In 2018 Greta Thunberg shared a warning that climate change would 'wipe out all of humanity' unless fossil fuels stopped within five years. By 2023 the fuels still burned; the tweet was gone.
What was said
“A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.”
— Greta Thunberg (tweet quoting a Grit Post article) · said Jun 21, 2018 · due June 21, 2023 (five years after the tweet)
The five years ran out in June 2023. Fossil fuels were not quit, humanity was not wiped out, and the only thing that disappeared was the tweet.
The fine print
Tweeted June 21, 2018, quoting a Grit Post article headlined 'Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don't Fix Climate Change by 2023'. Fine print, as fact-checkers noted: the tweet set a five-year deadline for quitting fossil fuels, not a date for extinction itself; viral 2023 posts claiming she predicted the world would end on June 21, 2023 overstated it. The deadline for the condition is what this entry tracks.
Later spin
The tweet was deleted sometime after March 7, 2023 (Snopes). In June 2023 the scientist the article cited, Harvard's James Anderson, told FactCheck.org: 'The "... wiping out of humanity by 2022" is a total distortion of what I said, implied, or meant ... I would never make such a statement.'
As of Oct 9, 2026
since it didn't happen
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