Greta arrives in New York with a global warning for Trump
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has arrived in New York City to chants and cheers, after a trans-atlantic trip on a yacht to attend a global warming conference.
Ms Thunberg, 16, and her crew were escorted into a lower Manhattan marina at about 4pm on Wednesday, concluding a two-week crossing from Plymouth. Hundreds of activists gathered on a Hudson River promenade to cheer her arrival.
“All of this is very overwhelming,” she said of the reception, looking slightly embarrassed.
The Swedish teenager refused to fly because of the carbon cost of plane travel. A 2018 study said that because of cloud and ozone formation, air travel may trap two to four times more heat than that caused by just emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Speaking to reporters after she landed, Ms Thunberg said the trip wasn’t as uncomfortable as she expected and she didn’t get seasick. But she stressed that “this is not something I want everyone to do.”
“It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand,” she said. “The climate and ecological crisis is a global crisis, the biggest crisis that humanity has ever faced, and if we don’t manage to work together and to cooperate and to work together despite our differences, then we will fail.”
Ms Thunberg has become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists, leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities.
Since then, she’s met the Pope, spoken at Davos and attended anti-coal protests in Germany. She is now taking a year off school to pursue her activism.
Her father, Svante Thunberg, crossed the ocean with her.
“He had to, because I had made up my mind I was going to go and he has to take care of me,” she said, standing on a swaying dock by the yacht. “He didn’t want to, but I sort of forced him to do it and I think he’s happy he did it.”
Themostdramaticmoments came “when you’re doing like 27, 28 knots and it’s very, very bumpy and you just try to hold on and not fall,” she said.
The boat was accompanied into New York by a flotilla of 17 boats organised by the UN.
Ms Thunberg was asked whether she had a message for US President Donald Trump, who rejects mainstream climate science.
“My message for him is just: listen to the science,” she said. “And he obviously doesn’t do that. So as I always say to this question: If no-one has been able to convince him about the climate crisis, the urgency, then why should I be able to do that? So I am just going to focus on spreading awareness.”