Days after her powerful speech to the UN climate action summit reverberated around the world, Greta Thunberg has been named among four winners of an international award dubbed the “alternative Nobels”.
The teen activist, whose impassioned speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit made international headlines this week, won the award for “inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts,” the organization said.
On Monday, Thunberg scolded the audience at the U.N. Climate Action Summit, repeatedly saying “How dare you.” Thunberg said: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and yet all you can talk about is money. You are failing us.”
“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. People are suffering, people are dying, and entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth,” she said in her powerful speech.
Thunberg’s global climate movement Fridays for Future began in August 2018 when she started sitting alone outside Sweden’s parliament with her now iconic sign reading “school strike for the climate”.
The message has struck a chord with youths around the world. Last Friday, an estimated four million plus people took to the streets in over 150 countries to join the Global Climate Strike protest, demanding action from politicians against climate disaster.
Thunberg shares the award with Brazilian indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami people, Chinese women’s rights lawyer Guo Jianmei and Western Sahara human rights defender Aminatou Haidar.
