Remember the Swedish teen climate change activist that made headlines after scolding world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York last month for stealing her “childhood” with “empty words” and promises? Well, she’s back, and still as arrogant as ever.
Greta Thunberg, 16, was offered an environmental award this week from the Nordic Council, which she not so respectfully declined with a rejection letter she shared via Instagram.
Thunberg began by calling the award, which comes with a cash prize 500,000 Swedish krona, or nearly $52,000 USD, “a huge honour.” She then changed her tune, saying, “But the climate movement does not need any more awards.”
Instead of accepting the award, she scolded the Nordic countries for failing to live up to the “changes required” to fight climate change and offered them this ultimatum:
[U]ntil you start to act in accordance with what the science says is needed to limit the global temperature rise below 1,5 degrees or even 2 degrees celsius, I - and Fridays For Future in Sweden - choose not to accept the Nordic Councils environmental award nor the prize money of 500 000 Swedish kronor.
The Nordic Council confirmed that Thunberg rejected their 2019 Environment Prize, saying the teen activist “has chosen not to accept it in protest at a lack of climate action.”
The council wrote that she had been awarded with the prize “for breathing new life into the debate surrounding the environment and climate at a critical moment in world history” and inspiring “millions of people around the world to demand concrete action from our politicians.”
Read her full letter below.