Greta Thunberg - the teenage climate activist from Sweden, who condemned world leaders for not taking enough action as far as tackling climate change is concerned - was earlier today named as one of four winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award.
The honour is an immense one, not least because the award in question is known as Sweden’s 'alternative Nobel Prize'. Furthermore, each of the four winners will receive a million kronor (roughly $100,000).
This is the moment Greta Thunberg criticised world leaders at a climate summit at the United Nations in New York:"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth," Thunberg said in her profound speech.
"How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight," she continued. "You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe."
What many also picked up on was that when the 16-year-old spotted President Donald Trump, who once said climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, she appeared to give him this no-nonsense glare:
In any case, Thunberg won the award "for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts," the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Thunberg began protesting outside Swedish parliament about a year ago. Inspired by the young activist, millions of young people all over the world took to the streets to demand their governments to take action in the fight against climate change.
