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Two Swedish lawmakers have nominated climate activist Greta Thunberg, 17, for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. Left Party leaders Jens Holm and Hakan Svenneling said Thunberg “has worked hard to make politicians open their eyes to the climate crisis” and “action for reducing our emissions and complying with the Paris Agreement is also an act of making peace.
Greta Thunberg, who began a global movement by skipping school and demanding action on climate change, angrily thundering “How Dare You” at the world’s most powerful leaders during the UN Climate Summit for their inaction, was declared as Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year.
“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 US publication said.
At 16, Thunberg is the youngest individual ever to be named TIME’s Person of the Year. The publication said the annual honour is historically accorded to people who worked their way up the ladders of major organisations and were at home in the corridors of power.
“But in this moment when so many traditional institutions seem to be failing us, amid staggering inequality and social upheaval and political paralysis, we are seeing new kinds of influence take hold. It is wielded by people like Thunberg, leaders with a cause and a phone who don’t fit the old rubrics but who connect with us in ways that institutions can’t and perhaps never could.”
