60 Time December 23–30, 2019
offices in a solo act of climate protest; she was
taken to a police station and told her demon-
stration was illegal. In Moscow, 25-year-old Ar-
shak Makichyan began a one-man picket for
climate, risking arrest in a country where street
protest is tightly restricted. In Haridwar, India,
11-year-old Ridhima Pandey joined 15 other
kids, including Thunberg, in filing a complaint
to the U.N. against Germany, France, Brazil, Ar-
gentina and Turkey, arguing that the nations’
failure to tackle the climate crisis amounted to
a violation of child rights.
In New York City, 17-year-old Xiye Bastida,
originally from an indigenous Otomi commu-
nity in Mexico, led 600 of her peers in a climate
walkout from her Manhattan high school. And
in Kampala, Uganda, 22-year-old Hilda Naka-
buye launched her own chapter of Fridays for
Future after she realized that the strong rains
and long droughts that hurt her family’s crops
could be attributed to global warming. “Before
I knew about climate change, I was already ex-
periencing its effects in my life,” she says.The activism of children has also moti-
vated their parents. In São Paulo, Isabella Prata
joined a group called Parents for Future to sup-
port child activists. Thunberg, she says, “is an
image of all of this generation.”
It all happened so fast. Just over a year ago,
a quiet and mostly friendless teenager woke
up, put on her blue hoodie, and sat by herself
for hours in an act of singular defiance. Four-
teen months later, she had become the voice of
millions, a symbol of a rising global rebellion.On Dec. 3, La Vagabonde docked beneath a
flight path to Portugal’s largest airport. Thun-
berg and her father stood on the deck, waving
to the hundreds of people that had gathered
on a cold, sunny day to welcome them back
to Europe. Above their heads, planes droned,
reminders of how easily Thunberg could have
crossed the ocean by air, and of the cost of
that convenience: the roughly 124,000 flights
that take off every day spill millions of tons of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “I’m(^2019) PERSON OF THE YEAR
A LONELY STRIKE
Thunberg first began
skipping school in
August 2018, sitting
in front of Swedish
Parliament to demand
climate action