This archive report was first published on 11 December 2019.
On December 11, 2019, Time magazine announced Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has become the voice of conscience for a generation facing the climate change emergency, as its 2019 Person of the Year.
Thunberg, 16 at the time, first gained international attention for her solo strike against global warming outside Sweden's parliament in 2018.
"We can't just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That is all we are saying," Thunberg told Time in an interview 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.
Thunberg has taken her disarmingly straightforward message—"listen to the scientists"—to global decision-makers, accusing them of inaction. Her efforts have led to a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change.
