Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has inspired a global movement for climate change, has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019.
Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal said the 16-year-old had become “the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet – and the avatar of a broader generational shift in our culture”.
Here is a timeline of Thunberg’s rise from a unknown, solo campaigner to the leader of a global movement:
- August 20, 2018: Swedish student Thunberg, then aged 15, skips school to protest outside parliament for more action against climate change.
- August 26, 2018: She is joined by fellow students, teachers and parents at another protest and begins attracting media attention for her climate campaign.
- September 2018: Thunberg begins a regular ‘strike’ from classes every Friday to protest climate issues. She invites other students to join her weekly “Fridays for Future” campaign by staging walkouts at their own schools.
- November 2018: More than 17,000 students in 24 countries take part in Friday school strikes. Thunberg begins speaking at high-profile events across Europe, including U.N. climate talks in Poland.
- March 2019: Thunberg is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The number of students taking part in school strikes hits more than 2 million people across 135 countries.
- May 2019: Thunberg is named one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine, appearing on its cover. “Now I am speaking to the whole world,” she wrote on Twitter.
- July 2019: Conservative and far-right lawmakers urge a boycott of Thunberg’s appearance in the French parliament, mocking her as a “guru of the apocalypse” and a “Nobel prize of fear”.
- August 5, 2019: Some 450 young climate activists from 37 European countries gather in Switzerland to discuss the movement’s development.
- August 2019: Thunberg, who refuses to fly, sails from Britain to the United States in a zero-emissions boat to take part in a U.N. climate summit. Meanwhile, the number of climate strikers reaches 3.6 million people across 169 countries.
- September 23, 2019: Thunberg delivers a blistering speech to leaders at the U.N. summit, accusing them of having “stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”.
- September 25, 2019: Thunberg is named as one of four winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize.
- October 4, 2019: Thunberg denounces the New York climate talks as “a failure” but urges supporters to keep pushing for change at a climate strike in Iowa.
- October 11, 2019: Despite being bookies’ favourite to win, Thunberg misses out of the Nobel Peace Prize which goes to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
- November 2019: Caught out by a last-minute switch of location for U.N. climate talks from Chile to Spain, Thunberg hitches a ride on a catamaran boat crossing back to Europe.
- December 11, 2019: Thunberg denounces “clever accounting and creative PR” to mask a lack of real action on climate change in a speech at the U.N. COP25 summit as the 16-year-old became the youngest individual to be Time Magazine’s person of the year.
Original post: http://news.trust.org