New York Magazine - USA (2019-09-16)

september 16–29, 2019 | new york 27

WHEN GRETA THUNBERG STEPPED ONBOARD THE MALIZIA II—a 60-foot racing

yacht owned by the royal family of Monaco—it had

been less than a year since she first walked out of

school as an unknown, awkward, nearly friendless

15-year-old making a lonely protest outside the

Swedish Parliament against her country’s absolute

indifference to the climate crisis, which she saw in

uncannily black-and-white terms. She painted her

now-iconic sign in those colors, which she carried

across the Atlantic on the two-week carbon-free

journey she documented periodically on social me-

dia. Black capital letters on white: skolstrejk för

klimatet (or “School Strike for Climate”).

By the time she stepped off the yacht in New York

on August 28, two weeks after she’d set sail from

Plymouth, England, wobbly legged from the weeks

at sea as she walked to address a crowd of many hun-

dreds, she had become something even more unusual

than an adolescent protester or even a generational

icon. She was the Joan of Arc of climate change, com-

manding a global army of teenage activists number-

ing in the millions and waging a rhetorical war

against her elders through the unapologetic use of

generational shame.

The comparison might seem hyperbolic and may

come to look even more strained than that, depend-

ing on what the future brings for Greta and for cli-

mate action. But for the moment, there is simply no

other appropriate analogy from political history to

draw on in describing just how much she has achieved

at such a young age and in so little time. (Even Malala

a 16-yer-old,nd her Hil Mry climate movement.

Greta in

Berlin in July.

By David

Wllce-Wells

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