Time’s Person of the Year is Greta Thunberg

Believe it or not, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg is Time’s 2019 Person of the Year. The Swedish teenager is mainly known for her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, where she criticized world leaders for “stealing her dreams and childhood” with their “empty words” regarding efforts to stop climate change.

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” she said. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Thunberg had chosen to travel to America by a zero-emissions boat to attend the summit but she was met with some backlash due to the fact that the crew that sailed her boat had to actually fly across the Atlantic to bring it back home.

However, after her speech went viral, Thunberg still grew into a big voice in the community and managed to start a movement of climate change protests around the world. Before that, she could only protest alone in front of the Swedish parliament during school hours, holding up a sign that says “School Strike for the Climate.”

All photos are from CNBC.