Greta hits dry land after Atlantic crossing

GRETA THUNBERG, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic in a boat to attend a conference on global warming.

Greta tweeted a photograph of the US coast with the words: “Land! The lights of Long Island and New York City ahead.”

She later said the boat that carried her, the Malizia II, had anchored off Coney Island, a neighbourhood in New York’s Brooklyn district, and that she had cleared customs.

The teenager decided not to make the journey by plane to avoid the hefty carbon emissions. The sailboat’s onboard electronics are powered by solar panels and underwater turbines for a zero-emissions crossing.

Taking turns steering the 60ft racing yacht were co-skippers Boris Herrmann and Pierre Casiraghi, the grandson of the late Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace of Monaco. The boat launched from Plymouth, Devon, and the journey lasted two weeks.

Greta has become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists and is in New York to attend a global warming conference.

Action against climate change was a theme of weekly protests she has led in Sweden that inspired student strikes in about 100 cities worldwide.

Greta attracted international attention last year when she refused to go to school in the weeks before Sweden’s general election to highlight the impact of climate change.

She then continued her school strike on Fridays after the election, spurring thousands of other young people to follow suit.

Since then, she has met the Pope, spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and attended anti-coal protests in Germany.

She is now taking a year off school to pursue her activism.