Teenage Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg Named Time's 2019 Person Of The Year

Time Magazine has named Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16-year-old who scolded the United Nations and led a generational climate movement, as its 2019 Person of the Year.

“Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Thunberg,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote.

What To Know About Greta Thunberg

Thunberg began her campaign with school strikes, which grew into larger protests, which eventually brought her to testify before Congress and other national governments.

"People are suffering. People are dying and dying ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth," she as a guest before the UN. "How dare you! For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight."

See Also: Exxon Mobil Gets Trial Win In Case Over Records On Cost Of Climate Change

What's Thunberg Up To?

She has spent the last year sailing across the world — she doesn’t fly, for environmental reasons — to urge legislatures and corporations to act to save the planet.

"The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening, when in fact almost nothing is being done, apart from clever accounting and creative PR," Thunberg said at a UN climate talk this week.

Thunberg won the recognition over a five-name shortlist that included President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the whistleblower on the Ukraine ordeal, and the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo credit: Anders Hellberg, Wikimedia