Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has said meeting President of the United States Donald Trump would be a ‘waste of time’.
While guest editing Radio 4’s Today Programme, Greta implied meeting with Trump would be pointless because ‘he’s obviously not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?’
It comes after Trump was accused of mocking the 16-year-old after she was named TIME’s person of the year, saying she has ‘an anger management problem’.
When questioned about the comments, Greta branded them funny, saying ‘they obviously don’t mean anything, it does mean they are terrified of young people bringing change’.
Ahead of the Today Programme, Greta’s father Svante Thunberg told BBC News his daughter is much happier since becoming an activist, however he does worry about the level of ‘hate’ she receives.
He said the teen handles criticism ‘incredibly well’, adding:
Quite frankly, I don’t know how she does it, but she laughs most of the time. She finds it hilarious.
In the candid interview, Svante spoke about how his daughter had struggled with depression for years before she began her school strike.
‘She stopped talking, she stopped going to school,’ he recalled, adding it was the ‘ultimate nightmare for a parent’ when Greta began refusing to eat.
As well as seeking medical help, the family spent more time together in a bid to help Greta get better, and over the years they discussed climate change as she became more and more passionate about tackling the issue.
Svante said her daughter accused himself and his wife Malena Ernman, who are ‘very active’ human rights advocates, as being ‘huge hypocrites’ for not taking climate change seriously.
He said the 16-year-old gained ‘energy’ from seeing her parents change their behaviours to become more environmentally friendly, which included her father becoming vegan and her mother choosing not to travel by aeroplane.
Svante accompanied his daughter on her sailing expeditions to UN climate summits in New York and Madrid, however he says he didn’t do it to save the environment.
‘I did all these things, I knew they were the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t do them to save the climate, I did it to save my child’.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.