NEW YORK: Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019.
Thunberg, who turns 17 in January is known for her blunt, straightforward speaking manner, has urged immediate action to address what she describes as the global climate crisis.
The Swedish teenager became the voice of conscience for a generation facing the climate change emergency hit headlines for her solo strike against global warming outside Sweden’s parliament last year.
“In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the U.N., met with the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history,” the magazine said.
“Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year,” Time said.
The magazine interviewed Thunberg aboard the sailboat that took her from the United States to Europe after a hectic 11-week North American trip to several US cities and Canada.
“We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That is all we are saying,” Thunberg told Time.
READ MORE: DiCaprio calls Greta Thunberg ‘leader of our time’
The Swedish activist was in Madrid as the award was announced, at a UN climate forum tasked with saving the world from runaway global warming.
“The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution,” Time wrote in the interview.
“But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change.
“She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not.”
Thunberg has taken her disarmingly straightforward message, “listen to the scientists”, to global decision-makers, accusing them of inaction.
.@GretaThunberg is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/YZ7U6Up76v pic.twitter.com/SWALBfeGl6
— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2019
