Combating climate change

Greta Thunberg and her generation might just have made enough of a difference to give the Earth a fighting chance

Time Magazine’s Person of 2019, Greta Thunberg is the only person to have stood up at the United Nations (UN) and called down collective shame on the world’s leaders. The Swedish teenager is well below voting age and she is neither a scientist, nor a policy wonk. But her plainspoken advocacy for measures to retard climate change has helped trigger mass movements that may yet induce governments to act more decisively. There have been massive rallies led by young people that have done more to shift public opinion than all the debates and climate change meets of past decades.