Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg has been named TIME magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, making her the youngest person ever to have been recognized by the magazine in its 92-year history. “Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Greta Thunberg,” the magazine said.
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Thunberg is known for her leadership in beginning a movement, which began small when she first camped outside of a Swedish Parliament building in the summer of 2018. The teenager held a sign painted in black letters on a white background that read Skolstrejk för klimatet, “School Strike for Climate.” "We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself," Thunberg said.
Sixteen months later the young woman took the world by storm and not only spoke with global representatives at the United Nations, but also met with the pope and President Barack Obama to address climate change. Thunberg has become a household icon for climate change, celebrated by the many who admire her bravery.
“The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution. But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change. She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not,” TIME wrote in its announcement.
With this news now public, most of Twitter is reacting with joy, using the hashtag #TIMEPersonoftheYear2019, and we are here for it. Here’s a roundup of the tweets trending now.