Time reveals 2019 Person of the Year

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been named Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year.

The 16-year-old, who became the face of the youth climate movement this year, is the youngest person ever to recieve the honour.

“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 wrote.

“Wow, this is unbelievable! I share this great honour with everyone in the #FridaysForFuture movement and climate activists everywhere,” Ms Thunberg wrote on Instagram.

Ms Thunberg first made headlines with her solo strike against global warming outside Sweden’s parliament in 2018.

Since then, her Fridays For Future strikes have drawn large crowds across the world, including in Australia, and she’s spoken at numerous high-profile conferences.

“We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That is all we are saying,” she told the magazine.

Time interviewed Ms Thunberg aboard the sailboat that took her from the United States to Europe after a hectic 11-week North American trip to several US cities and Canada.

“The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution,” the magazine wrote.

“But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change.

“She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not.”
 

CONGRATULATIONS ROLL IN

Ms Thunberg was in Madrid for a UN-sponsored climate forum when the award was announced.

But a number of charities, including Save the Children, were quick to congratulate the teen on Twitter.

“Thank you for standing up and speaking out for every child’s right to a sustainable future,” it wrote.

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