After weeks at sea, Greta Thunberg hits dry land in time for huge climate summit

From blistering speeches to taking on Trump, 2019 has been this teen's year, says Katie Strick

“Land ahoy!” said the tweet at 6.06am yesterday morning — confirmation that the world’s most famous 16-year-old, Greta Thunberg, had made it to dry land in time for this week’s COP25 climate conference in Madrid.

The three-week voyage was Thunberg’s second transatlantic boat crossing of 2019 and a fitting final chapter to the year that has seen the Swedish climate activist become the face of a global movement.

In the past 12 months, Thunberg has rallied world leaders, mobilised more than six million people across 150 countries in striking to protest the climate emergency, and later this month, she will be one of the guest editors on the BBC’s Today programme.

She has propelled forward conversations on everything from single-use plastics to flight-free travel. Quite an extraordinary roll call of achievements — and she’s just getting started. This is how Greta ruled 2019.

Children of the revolution

Many spend their lives campaigning for a Nobel Prize nomination — Thunberg had achieved hers by the age of 15, just seven months after she started doing her school climate strikes in August last year.

The young Swedish activist spent her schooldays camped outside Sweden’s parliament, armed with a placard reading “school strike for the climate”.

After the country’s general election, she continued to strike on Fridays and soon others had joined in.

At the most recent coordinated school climate strikes, held across the world on September 20 and 27, more than six million people in 150 countries took to the streets — including London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and the Pacific Islands.

Global Climate Strike: September 2019 - In pictures

1/61

In February, a UK-wide strike involved more than 10,000 children in 60 towns and cities across the UK — from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands.

The Greta effect

“I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is,” Thunberg told the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, to which she took a 32-hour train journey from her home in Stockholm.

Since then, her carbon-free travel commitment has included a US tour in a Tesla Model 3 Electric Car loaned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a 15-day sailing voyage from Plymouth to New York, and a second transatlantic crossing in time for this week’s climate demonstration in Madrid.

It was no smooth ride: during her latest three-week voyage, Thunberg encountered seasickness, high winds and sub-zero temperatures — but it was all for a greater cause.

Her flight shaming has made waves across the globe. A-listers including designer Diane von Furstenberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos chose to sail to Google’s climate camp in Italy this summer (it’s a start, eh?), Dutch airline KLM recently announced plans to partner with European train companies to replace flights, and French politicians have suggested that some long-haul international routes and domestic flights should be banned outright.

According to a recent survey, one in five travellers now flies less for the sake of the planet thanks to “the Greta effect”.

OK, Boomer

You’ll have seen the GIFs: the message “we are all Greta” emblazoned across the iconic image of a sour-faced Thunberg staring down at Donald Trump at the UN climate action summit in September.

Ashamedly, we are not all Greta — “At your age I was worrying about Tamagotchis and which boys to kiss,” model and actress Poppy Delevingne said on Instagram following the summit — and she makes a good point.

Greta glaring at Trump at the UN Climate summit (Reuters )
Reuters

Taking on world leaders in the fight against climate change is no mean feat, especially when you’re 16 — yet the schoolgirl has held her own.

On a trip to London in April, she met Commons Speaker John Bercow and led round-table talks with leaders Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas and Ian Blackford.

“This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind,” she told them sternly.

Five months later she made her famously impassioned speech in New York: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg told UN leaders.

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg pictured after disembarking from the catamaran in Lisbon
AFP via Getty Images

Her words were not empty: the following month Thunberg refused to accept a £42,000 environmental prize from the Nordic Council, saying the movement does not need any more awards.

Instead, it needs “our politicians and the people in power to start to listen to the current, best available science”: this weekend she will speak at climate demonstrations in Madrid, and later this month she will join Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry and UK Supreme Court president Baroness Hale of Richmond, each guest-editing an episode of Radio 4’s Today programme.

Haters gonna hate

“I have not met Greta Thunberg, but Greta Thunberg changed my life,” actress and activist Jane Fonda told Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards last month, revealing the teen protester had inspired her to cut single-use plastic, eat less meat and drive an electric car.

Fonda is not the only starry figure to have been moved by Thunberg: Sir David Attenborough called her “truly remarkable” and revealed his hopes to meet her; Leonardo DiCaprio posted a gushing Instagram picture after meeting the teen last month; and two-time Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood has called her the “Joan of Arc of the environment”.

Thunberg has been targeted by others — including Trump, who mockingly tweeted that “she seems like a very happy little girl” — but Thunberg has handled these trolls with grace.

“When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go. And then you know you’re winning!” she tweeted in September in response to those who were mocking her Asperger’s diagnosis. “I have Asperger’s and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And — given the right circumstances — being different is a superpower.”

An icon is born

Thunberg’s Instagram grid is — of course — free of airbrushed selfies and sponsored #ads, but the Swedish teen has undoubtedly become one of the greatest influencers of 2019: at a last count, her Instagram following topped 8.3 million — only a million shy of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s official @sussexroyal account — and her catchphrases have inspired a stream of hashtags.

A UN speech-inspired #howdareyou pulls up more than 83,000 posts; the hashtag #greta amasses 350,000 (confirmation she’s reached official first-name-only status); and the site’s 3,000 #gretathunbergmemes range from photoshopped Titanic scenes with DiCaprio (a mega-fan) to speech remixes (Fatboy Slim’s remix of her UN address was the soundtrack of the latest Extinction Rebellion march in October).

Offline, too, she has become a cultural icon. The Oxford English Dictionary recently declared “climate strike” as its word(s) of the year thanks to Thunberg’s protest efforts; the Natural History Museum has named a new species of beetle “gretae” in her honour; and Greta murals have been spotted across the world from San Francisco to Notting Hill — a Make The World Greta Again artwork was spotted on a wall there last month.

Naturally, Greta merch is set to top Christmas lists. Thunberg’s award-winning speech collection, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, is a cult gift this year, and statement (unofficial) How Dare You? tees are selling out on Amazon (though Thunberg possibly wouldn’t approve of a fast fashion range in her name).

Merch isn’t just for grown-ups. Young fans have drawn parallels between Thunberg and Frozen 2’s Elsa, another Scandinavian on a mission to right adults’ wrongs, and sales are skyrocketing for illustrated Greta-inspired children’s books like Greta and the Giants, which shows a placard-holding cartoon Thunberg on the cover in her favourite yellow raincoat. Fashion editors already have their own term for the climate activist’s signature hue: Greta Yellow.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in