STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Climate activist Greta Thunberg is back in school after a gap year in which she emerged as the voice of young people trying to save the planet from global warming and a thorn in the side of politicians she sees as dragging their heels over change.
Posting a picture of herself with a backpack and pushing a bicycle, the Swedish 17-year-old tweeted: “My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!”
Thunberg, who sparked a global youth-led protest movement after striking outside the Swedish parliament in 2018, has spent the last year berating politicians about rising global temperatures and what she sees as their failure to live up to agreements enshrined in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019, Thunberg has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the COP25 climate summit in Madrid over the last 12 months, calling for urgent action to prevent a climate disaster.
In a Reuters interview in July, Thunberg said people in power had practically given up on handing over a decent future to coming generations.
With Europe beginning to emerge from coronavirus lockdowns, there have been calls for the EU’s recovery fund to be used to promote a transition to a “green” economy.
Meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, Thunberg called on her to step out of her “comfort zone” and speed up action to fight the climate emergency.
(Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Giles Elgood)