16 year old, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019, NBC’s Today show announced on Wednesday.
Greta, who turns 17 in January and who is known for her blunt, straightforward addresses to world leaders, has urged immediate action to address what she describes as the climate crises.
According to Aljazeera, the teen, whose climate activism went viral in 2018, delivered a scathing speech at the UN General Assembly at the Climate Action Summit in New York City in September. She had traveled for nearly 14 days across the Atlantic Ocean in a zero-emissions racing yacht to attend the conference.
Days before appearing before the UN, Thunberg protesters in Washington, DC, who decried US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a worldwide pact to stem the rise in global temperatures – as well as the president’s rollback of environmental protections.
While in the US capital, Thunberg also testified before a Senate task force on climate change.
Aljazeera reported that the movement officially began in August of 2018 after Thunberg spent three weeks sitting in front of the Swedish parliament demanding action on climate change during school days. Her actions, which she posted on social media, went viral and morphed into a weekly Friday protest.
