Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
You’ve woken up the world, Greta
Attenborough’s tribute to teen climate activist
SIR David Attenborough yesterday told teen activist Greta Thunberg her climate change protests were having an “astonishing” impact.
In their first ever conversation, the 93-year-old naturalist and broadcaster told 16-year-old Greta she had “woken up the world” to climate change.
And Sir David praised her for delivering “a very powerful” message.
Speaking to Greta via Skype as she guest-edited BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he told her: “You have made it an argument that people have not been able to dodge.
“We don’t want to spend our time marching through the streets, but we have to. People of my generation should be very grateful to you.” He said it was depressing when governments in the US, Brazil and Australia took no notice of what needed to be done.
Sir David said: “It needs a real electric shock – such as you have produced socially – to bring them to their senses, and let’s hope that shock will go on.”
Sir David said he had stressed the need for changes to daily lives to halt global warming two decades ago, but “no one took a blind bit of notice”.
The Swedish schoolgirl said his documentaries about the natural world had “opened her eyes” to what was happening in the environment.
Greta told Sir David: “Thank you for that.” She said US President Donald Trump, who once told her to “chill”, and Brazil’s premier Jair Bolsonaro, who branded her a “brat”, were “terrified of young people bringing change, which they don’t want”. Svante Thunberg said his daughter had depression for “three or four years”, when she had stopped talking and stopped going to school, before her activism had made her happier. He said: “She dances around, she laughs a lot, we have a lot of fun – and she’s in a very good place.” Greta said: “Just being part of a movement that has so much impact on the world is an amazing feeling.”
Sir David is backing a fight to stop 500 homes being built at Askham Bog, York, one of the UK’S oldest peat bogs.