Earth Protect Blog

Shared from the 12/12/2019 The Denver Post eEdition

Time magazine said teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is being honored for work that transcends backgrounds and borders.

Time, via The Associated Press

MADRID » Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg said she was surprised and honored Wednesday to be named Time’s youngest Person of the Year, while adding that others in the global movement she helped inspire deserve to share the accolade.

The 16-year-old Swede has become the face of a new generation of environmental activists, drawing large crowds with her appearances at protests and conferences in the past year and a half. Some have welcomed her work, including her speeches challenging world leaders to do more to stop global warming. Others have criticized her tone, sometimes combative.

“For sounding the alarm about humanity’s predatory relationship with the only home we have, for bringing to a fragmented world a voice that transcends backgrounds and borders, for showing us all what it might look like when a new generation leads, Greta Thunberg is Time’s 2019 Person of the Year,” the magazine said.

As she left a U.N. climate conference in Madrid, Thunberg said she was “a bit surprised” at the recognition. “I could never have imagined anything like that happening,” she said.

“I’m of course, very grateful for that, very honored,” Thunberg said, but added: “It should be everyone in the Fridays for Future movement because what we have done, we have done together.”

Thunberg said she hopes the message being pushed by her and other activists — that governments need to increase their efforts drastically to combat climate change — is getting through. The “Greta effect” has been linked to a rise in support for environmental parties in Europe.

But she insisted that the media should also pay attention to other activists, particularly indigenous people, whom she said “are hit hardest by the climate and environmental crisis.”

The teenager has also been a strong advocate of science, regularly citing complex studies about the causes and impacts of climate change. — The Associated Press