TEENAGE climate activist Greta Thunberg says the global climate crisis is the “only thing hat matters”.
In April this year, the Swedish school pupil visited the Westminster Parliament, where she delivered a speech to MPs in which she said her future had been “stolen”.
The 16-year-old also backed Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to declare a climate emergency.
In a new interview by Wired UK Magazine, Thunberg sought to emphasise the severity of the unfolding climate crisis.
She said: “I have just decided that I will do this even if there is no hope. Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.
“Everyone says different things. Some say we are already screwed and some say we still have time.
“I just hope that this movement will continue and we do something about the climate – because that is the only thing that matters.”
Despite appearing on the cover of the July/August issue of Wired UK Magazine, the school girl sought to play down notions of fame. She said: “I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that ... I have not really done anything.”
Greg Williams, editor-in-chief of Wired UK, said of Thunberg: “What’s interesting is we’ve known there’s a global climate emergency that’s been ongoing for the best part of 30 or 40 years.
“We’ve had multiple congresses and large organisations being aware of it. But it’s taken a 16-year-old in Sweden to get this on the news agenda, so we just think of her as this powerful, titanic, calculus for change and she’s brought the immediacy of this crisis that we are facing and the urgency of this into relief in a way that has not been done before.”
The upcoming issue of the magazine will also be delivered to subscribers wrapped in compostable bags for the first time.
Williams said: “We have been thinking about this for a while and our subscription team came to us and said they had found a potato starch-based product that has the strength and the durability we need for this kind of thing and it was a very quick meeting.
“We said ‘Absolutely yes, let’s do this, how quickly can we do it?’”
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