Schoolgirl climate activist Greta Thunberg does not see herself as an icon
The teenager also said the climate is the only thing that matters.
Schoolgirl climate activist Greta Thunberg has said she does not consider herself “a celebrity or an icon”.
The 16-year-old Swedish student appears on the cover of the July/August issue of Wired UK Magazine.
She said: “I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that…I have not really done anything”.
In April this year, Thunberg visited the Houses of Parliament where she delivered a speech to MPs in which she said her future had been “stolen”.
However, the climate activist told the magazine that she is living in the present, and trying to change what she can in the moment.
She said: “I have just decided that I will do this even if there is no hope. Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something. Everyone says different things. Some say we are already screwed and some say we still have time.
“I just hope that this movement will continue and we do something about the climate – because that is the only thing that matters.”
Greg Williams, editor-in-chief of Wired UK, said of Thunberg: “What’s interesting is we’ve known there’s a global climate emergency that’s been ongoing for the best part of 30 or 40 years. We’ve had multiple congresses and large organisations being aware of it.
“But it’s taken a 16-year-old in Sweden to get this on the news agenda, so we just think of her as this powerful, titanic, calculus for change and she’s brought the immediacy of this crisis that we are facing and the urgency of this into relief in a way that has not been done before”.
The upcoming issue of the magazine will also see subscribers receive their magazines wrapped in compostable bags for the first time.
Williams said: “We have been thinking about this for a while and our subscription team came to us and said they had found a potato starch-based product that has the strength and the durability we need for this kind of thing and it was a very quick meeting. We said ‘Absolutely yes, let’s do this, how quickly can we do it?'”
The full feature is in the July/August Issue of Wired UK, available on newsstands and digital download on June 6.
