Greta Thunberg, an activist that is 16-years-old was awarded Time’s 2019 Person of the Year. 

Thunberg is from Sweden where she is a climate change activist. 

“She became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal told the Today Show. 

Just at the age of 15 she tried to fight the Swedish Parliament by protesting every Friday in 2018. She started a “Future for the Friday’s” movement which was protesting that she participated in and came up with. 

Thunberg has asperger’s syndrome which has to do with behavioral and social interactions but that still didn’t stop her from being interested in climate change at the age of eight.  

“I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans are an animal species, among others, could be capable of changing the Earth’s climate,” Thunberg said during a 2018 Ted Talk. 

According to NBC News, not only did she start Future for the Friday’s, she also filed a legal complaint with the United Nations against five countries under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child alleging the nations are not doing enough to combat climate change and that their inaction is affecting their right to thrive.

She won an award for environmental issues at a Stockholm ceremony held by the Nordic Council, but declined the award because she thought the climate issues didn’t need another award. She also was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize but lost against the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali. 

In 2018, Thunberg stood up for herself in front of Congress talking about her United Nations global warming report by saying, “I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science.”

Besides the negativity and criticism about climate change, she still has made a huge step in helping the world with giving up eating meat not traveling on airplanes anymore. 

“Change is coming,” Thunberg said, “Whether you like it or not.”