Others can fly, but not for her – Thunberg
Greta Thunberg, who turned 18 yesterday, shuns flying but insists she does not mind if others decide to jet abroad.
‘‘I don’t care,’’ she told The Sunday Times Magazine when asked about celebrities who fly around the world voicing passionate concern for the environment. ‘‘I’m not telling anyone else what to do.’’
Nor does she agree with more radical campaigners who argue that having children is irresponsible at a time of peril for the planet. ‘‘I don’t think it’s selfish to have children,’’ Thunberg says. ‘‘It is not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour.’’
The vegan teenager, who was named Time magazine’s person of the year in 2019 for her activism, said: ‘‘I don’t need to fly to Thailand to be happy.’’
She is routinely included on lists of the world’s most influential women, yet her fellow teenagers may be reluctant to copy some aspects of her increasingly ascetic lifestyle. She has given up buying new clothes.
‘‘I don’t need new clothes,’’ she says. ‘‘I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need any more. The worst-case scenario, I guess I’ll buy second-hand.’’
Thunberg reveals some of the strain that her three years in the public eye have brought on her family, including death threats that have been investigated by the police.
‘‘Of course I feel guilty, especially since these death threats aren’t just for me, they are for my whole family,’’ she says.
‘‘I don’t care what people say about me online but when it impacts the people around you then it becomes something else.’’
Now at home with her family in
Sweden, she says that her perfect present for her 18th birthday would be a ‘‘promise from everyone that they will do everything they can’’ for the planet. Pressed to choose a gift, she replied: ‘‘The headlights on my bike are broken. In Sweden it gets very dark in the winter.’’ – The Times