Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish student whose school-skipping protests to highlight the existential need for big action on climate change have inspired tens of thousands of European teens to join her "school strikes," is coming to spread her message to the U.S., she said Monday. Thunberg will attend United Nations climate summits in New York in September and Chile in December, but she had struggled for months to come up with an ecologically appropriate form of travel.
Airplanes are big polluters but so are cruise ships, and smaller boats are dangerous to sail through August's active hurricane-prone Atlantic waters. "Taking a boat to North America is basically impossible," she told The Associated Press, except aboard the high-speed racing yacht she will travel on, accompanied by a filmmaker, her father, Svante, and Pierre Casiraghi, the grandson of the late Grace Kelly and Monaco's Prince Rainier III. The 60-foot yacht, Malizia II, runs on solar panels and underwater turbines to generate zero carbon emissions. "I haven't experienced anything like this before," Thunberg told AP, giggling. "I think this will be a trip to remember."
Thunberg said she plans to appear at the U.N. and take part in several climate protest in New York, but she thinks meeting President Trump would be "just a waste of time" because "I have nothing to say to him." Trump "obviously doesn't listen to the science and the scientists," she reasoned. "So why should I, a child with no proper education, be able to convince him?"
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Leonard and Hungry Paul: ‘beautiful, heartfelt’ televisionThe Week Recommends Julia Roberts narrates this ‘charming’ and ‘unexpectedly profound’ adaptation of Rónán Hession’s novel
-
Inside The Peninsula, London’s first billion-pound hotelThe Week Recommends As the capital’s super-luxury hotel scene continues to expand, the respected brand is still setting the standard
-
AI is making houses more expensiveUnder the radar Homebuying is also made trickier by AI-generated internet listings
-
The Earth is getting darkerUnder the radar The planet’s reflectivity is out of whack
-
Scientists want to use enhanced rock weathering to cool the EarthUnder the radar Rock dust could trap atmospheric carbon
-
Icarus programme – the ‘internet of animals’The Explainer Researchers aim to monitor 100,000 animals worldwide with GPS trackers, using data to understand climate change and help predict disasters and pandemics
-
Renewables top coal as Trump seeks reversalSpeed Read For the first time, renewable energy sources generated more power than coal, said a new report
-
China vows first emissions cut, sidelining USSpeed Read The US, the world’s No. 2 emitter, did not attend the New York summit
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warmingUnder the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
Earth's seasons are out of whackUnder the radar The seasons' unfixed nature in different regions of the planet may have impacted biodiversity and evolution
-
At least 800 dead in Afghanistan earthquakespeed read A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan
