The Swedish environmental activist, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who was previously nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her activities aimed at saving the climate, is set to take a gap year at school to make her way to the US without resorting to airplanes, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote.
The girl has been invited to take the floor at a UN gathering in September, while in October she is expected to arrive at an ecological summit in Santiago, Chile.
As the young woman has consciously rejected the option to fly anywhere, due to the massive amounts of exhaust fumes from airplanes ruining the ozone layer, the planet’s natural UV shield, the journey from Europe to the US is expected to take quite a lengthy period of time.
“As I don’t use planes, I will have to get across the Atlantic in some other way. I haven’t yet decided how I’ll do it, but this way or another I’ll reach the destination”, the teenager remarked adding that she has at least to try all possible means.
She has applied for a year-long leave from school, and is set to start her studies at the Swedish gymnasium (high school studies that normally last for two years in the Nordic country) a year later, which, as Thunberg noted, will by no means have a negative effect on her general level of education.
“I haven’t yet decided what exactly I will set about doing, I would like to gain knowledge of so many different things, perhaps learn another language”, the activist recounted.
Thunberg’s one-person protest has grown into a massive international movement that has united thousands of people across the world. Greta, a Nobel Prize nominee, came into the spotlight when she made a speech at a conference in Davos, and the EU Parliament in Strasbourg as well as a tete-a-tete meeting with the Pope.
In Scandinavia, she is commonly referred to as "Climate Greta" and boasts a lot of media coverage being venerated by the political establishment despite her repeated negative portrayal of their actions as insufficient. Sweden's goal to become carbon neutral by 2045 has been called "the world's most ambitious climate law".
Meanwhile, Greta's name has stirred a certain controversy after in 2018, Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of the non-profit We Don't Have Time Foundation, who claims to have "found" and "developed" Thunberg, reportedly employed her as an unpaid young volunteer and used Thunberg's name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise funds.