Greta Thunberg believes it’s time to “quit the megaphone” on climate change issues – but calls for more “civil disobedience” as eco-protests sweep across Europe.
The teen activist, 19, wants to step out of the spotlight four years after launching a now world-famous ‘School Strike for the Climate’ movement in favor of people who are actually suffering the effects of climate change.
But she also wants activists to “embrace” disruptive protests of the kind that have brought streets to a standstill and seen eco-zealots hurl food at famous paintings and taped themselves to museum walls.
Speaking to TT news agency in her native Sweden, Greta said: “I think civil disobedience is something we need to embrace more if we do it right and nobody gets hurt.
Greta Thunberg (left in London this year, right in Sweden last year) has said it’s time for her to ditch the climate change megaphone in favor of those who are actually suffering the effects
Supporting protesters who have vandalized museums and taped themselves to walls, Greta said that “civil disobedience… is something we must embrace”.
“But then it’s important that it doesn’t do more harm than good.
“We’re in dire straits and sometimes it feels like people are focusing a little too short-term on these kinds of issues.”
Greta has spoken out as she launches a new book on climate change and nears the end of her school days – and admitted she doesn’t know what she will do next.
Over the past four years, Greta has gone from being a lonely activist outside of Sweden’s parliament, to someone she loves or loathes, who embodies the righteous anger of young people on a planet in crisis, or a grumpy teenager – depending on yours Position.
Thunberg said she initially believed an urgent debate on climate was needed to save the world for future generations.
But over time, she said, she understood that the climate crisis was already having a devastating impact on people’s lives.
“That’s why it becomes even more hypocritical when people say, for example in Sweden, that we have time to adapt and shouldn’t be afraid of the future,” she said.
Thunberg has previously said she will skip the COP27 talks in Sharm El-Sheikh from Monday, calling them a forum for “greenwashing”.
She told TT her discussions with world leaders had made her pessimistic about her ability to make progress on the issue.
“Some of the things that world leaders and heads of state have said when the mic is off are hard to believe when you tell people,” she said.
“For example: ‘If I had known what we agreed to when we signed the Paris Agreement, I would never have signed it,’ or ‘You kids are better informed than I am on this subject,'” she said.
“The lack of knowledge among the world’s most powerful people is shocking.”
Video captured the moment the angry passerby jostled for control of the device with the climate activist spray-painting them as they doused the front of MI5’s Marsham Street building in Westminster
News Corp’s London Bridge headquarters – which own publications such as The Sun, The Times and TalkTV – have also been targeted by the group. It is the second time the building has been vandalized by environmental activists this year
Thunberg, who is in her final year of high school in Stockholm, said she hasn’t decided what she will do after graduation.
‘We will see. If I had to choose today, I would continue my studies. Preferably something related to social issues,” she said.
Meanwhile, the climate protest movement that Greta helped launch shows no signs of slowing down and is growing more militant.
Early Monday, activists from Just Stop Oil blocked part of the M25 and scaled bridges over the road as part of their latest demonstration disrupting life in Britain.
Louise Harris, 24, was one of more than a dozen protesters who enforced road closures during the morning rush hour despite a court order.
Police confirmed that 15 arrests have already been made during the demonstrations, although this number is expected to increase throughout the day.
Meanwhile, activists prevented private planes from taking off at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Saturday – using bicycles to avoid pursuit by police and security forces.
The protest was part of a day of demonstrations around the air hub organized by Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion ahead of the COP27 climate talks in Egypt.
In another protest, two activists taped themselves to the frames of two paintings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
The two young women are raising awareness of the importance of staying within the 1.5 degree global warming limit agreed at the Paris summit
Environmental activists in white overalls stormed an area in private jets at Schiphol Airport, south-west of the capital, before military police moved in and bused dozens of the protesters away
The pair scrawled the message +1.5 degrees Celsius between the paintings they were targeting – nude Maya and clothed Maya – a nod to the global warming target set at COP26, which experts say the world is on is well on the way to missing it.
The activists identified themselves as members of Futuro Vegetal, which literally means Cozy Future and is a movement associated with Extinction Rebellion Spain.
The latest museum protest follows an incident last month in which activists from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers at the National Gallery in London.
Days later, climate activists threw mashed potatoes at a painting by Claude Monet in Germany.
Most recently on Friday, a group of activists threw pea soup at a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece in Rome, in a protest they warned will continue until more attention is paid to climate change.
‘The Sower’, an 1888 painting by the Dutch artist depicting a farmer sowing his land under a dominant sun, was displayed undamaged behind glass.
Security immediately intervened and removed the protesters who were kneeling in front of “The Sower” in the Palazzo Bonaparte. Demonstrators from the same group, the Last Generation, previously blocked a highway near Rome.