Iceland’s Prime Minister responds to Björk's comments about not declaring climate emergency in 2019

In a new interview with The Guardian this morning (19 August), Björk revealed the title and a few details of her forthcoming album Fossora, and also spoke about environmental activism, revealing that she was "so pissed off" with Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir for backing out of declaring a climate emergency in 2019.

According to the piece, Björk, Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Greta Thunberg teamed up to declare a climate emergency in 2019 in the hope of getting an official response from the government, but Björk claims Jakobsdóttir backed out and didn't mention it at all in her speech. "I kind of trusted her, maybe because she was a woman – and then she went and did a speech and she didn’t say a word," Björk said. "She didn’t even mention it. And I was so pissed off."

Björk added, "I wanted to be backing her up. It’s hard to be a female prime minister; she’s got all the rednecks on her back. But she hasn’t done anything for the environment."

Responding to Björk's comments, Iceland's Prime Minister told Iceland's RÚV, "It is clear that she encouraged me to declare a climate emergency at this conference and did so through a message. It was considered, as I told her, and discussed at government level. Our conclusion was to take a different approach, that is, to focus on climate action. That's what we've been doing ever since."

She added, "It is absolutely true that she encouraged me to do this. I discussed this at the government level, whether this was the approach we wanted to take, and the result was the one I have described. We wanted to emphasise the results of actions rather than high-pitched statements, and in fact more nations have chosen that path."

Jakobsdóttir has been the chairperson of the Left-Green Movement since 2013. She became Iceland's Prime Minister in 2017, and currently runs a coalition government with the Independence Party and the Progressive Party.