PA ImagesAfter a busy year of climate change activism and earning herself the title of TIME’s Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg says she needs a rest.
The 16-year-old has spent the past 12 months travelling the globe by sea, rail and road in a desperate bid to make world leaders acknowledge what she believes is the imminent threat of climate change.
In between trading blows with US president Donald Trump and being named as a Nobel Peace Prize hopeful, Thunberg attended a rally in the Italian city of Turin on Friday to try and pressure the government into cutting carbon emissions.
PA ImagesThe teen has spent much time campaigning away from her native Sweden, particularly in the US, where she addressed the heads of state at the UN headquarters with a powerful speech accusing them of stealing her future.
Now, Thunberg is heading home for Christmas for a well-deserved rest from saving the world.
As per the Independent, she told reporters in Turin:
I will be home for Christmas and then I will take a holiday break because you need to take rest. Otherwise you cannot do this all the time.
Despite her busy year, Greta didn’t appear worn down during her appearance in Italy, where she headed a rally in one of the country’s main industrial and polluting regions, and the home of Fiat auto company.
PA ImagesAddressing the crowd, she said:
It is not fair that the older generation are handing over the responsibility to solve this crisis to us young people who have not started this crisis. It’s not fair that we have to do all this.
The adults are behaving as if there is no tomorrow but there is a tomorrow, it is the tomorrow where our young people will live and we have to fight for that tomorrow. We can no longer take that tomorrow for granted.
What we decide to do or not to do in this decade we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. And our children and our grandchildren will also have to live with it.
The year is almost over. We must make sure that 2020 is the year of action, is the year when we bend the global emissions curve.
We are going to put pressure on those in power, we are going to make sure that they will act and they will take responsibility.
Let’s hope the teen gets the rest she needs this festive season, so she can continue her battle to save the world fighting fit in the new year.
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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.