This handout image released on December 11, 2019 courtesy of Time shows the Time person of the Year December 23/December 30, 2019 cover with Greta Thunberg. – Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who became the voice of conscience for a generation facing the climate change emergency, was announced December 11, 2019 as Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year. The 16-year-old first hit the headlines for her solo strike against global warming outside Sweden’s parliament last year.
“We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That is all we are saying,” Thunberg told Time. The Swedish activist was in Madrid as the award was announced, at a UN climate forum tasked with saving the world from runaway global warming. “She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not.”Within months of launching her lonely"School Strike for the Climate" protest outside the Swedish parliament Thunberg was spearheading global demonstrations by young people and demanding environmental action from world leaders.