Climate change activist Greta Thunberg to take message to US by boat

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager whose social media-savvy activism has inspired tens of thousands of students in Europe to miss lessons and protest for faster action against climate change, plans to take her message to America the old-fashioned way: by boat.

The 16-year-old tweeted on Monday that she will sail across the Atlantic aboard a high-tech racing yacht, leaving Britain next month.

Good news!
I’ll be joining the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, COP25 in Santiago and other events along the way.
I’ve been offered a ride on the 60ft racing boat Malizia II. We’ll be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to NYC in mid August.#UniteBehindTheScience pic.twitter.com/9OH6mOEDce

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 29, 2019

In an exclusive interview ahead of her announcement, Thunberg said she spent a long time trying to figure out whether she could accept invitations to UN climate summits in New York and Santiago, Chile, later this year.

Greta, who does not use planes because of their high greenhouse gas emissions, says “it needs to be easier to be climate neutral”.