(CN) — Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old autistic Swedish girl with braids, single-minded determination and an apocalyptic message who has taken Europe by storm and become the face of climate-change activism.
She's seen by her growing number of supporters as a godsend — a visionary in the mold of Joan of Arc leading Europe, and the world, into the greatest of wars: the salvation of the planet and civilization by stopping global warming.
She doesn't take airplanes, she doesn't eat meat and she's persuaded her parents, celebrities in Sweden, to do the same. Now she wants politicians, the media and the public to wake up and see climate change as the world’s gravest crisis.
Her meteoric rise to international stardom reached full blossom in the past two weeks when she met Pope Francis, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, delivered a stark warning to the European Parliament and was welcomed in the House of Commons in London, with some parliamentarians breaking House rules by applauding to show their admiration for her.
In eight months, Thunberg has become an inspiration for a wave of protests and school strikes over inaction by politicians, and modern civilization generally, to take the drastic steps needed to keep the planet from plunging off the cliff.
Her call for urgent action comes as Europe heads toward another summer of dread. In recent years Europe's summers have been marked by wildfires, drought, heat waves and refugees fleeing climate-stricken parts of Africa and Asia.
This protest movement found its fullest expression so far in the past week in London with the Extinction Rebellion. Thousands of peaceful protesters swarmed the city center and blocked some of London's busiest thoroughfares, calling for an end to the era of fossil fuels and action to stop what scientists say is the planet's human-caused sixth mass extinction. The protests, which led to more than 1,000 arrests, were set to end Thursday after protesters disrupted London's financial district.
On Sunday, Thunberg joined those protests and delivered one of her famously stark warnings.
“Humanity is now standing at a crossroads. We must now decide which path we want to take, how do we want the living conditions for all living species to be like,” she told throngs of people at Marble Arch in London.
“We are now facing an existential crisis, climate crisis and ecological crisis, which have never been treated as crises before. They have been ignored for decades,” she said, speaking in fluent English, her voice quiet yet strong and firm. Her audience listened attentively, enthralled.
“And for way too long, the politicians and people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis and the ecological crisis. But we will make sure they will not get away with it any longer,” she said, drawing cheers.
On Friday, Thunberg is expected to return to the spot where she started her remarkable journey: outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, demanding immediate action to stop a descent into ecological Armageddon.
It began on Aug. 20, 2018, when she skipped school and sat down outside the Swedish Parliament with a handmade sign: “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“School strike for the climate”). She was inspired to strike, she says, by students at Stoneman Douglas High School who went on strike after the mass murders at their school in Parkland, Florida.
Her story quickly caught on, and she was soon the subject of articles in major European newspapers and appeared on television. Her one-person strike grew into a movement and by this spring students across the world were skipping classes to demand action on climate change.