Teen Activist Greta Thunberg Awarded 'Alternative Nobel Prize' For Climate Change Activism
It's been just a couple of days since teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg took the world by storm with her fiery address in Manhattan on Monday, where she reprimanded the world’s leaders for not doing more to steer the tide of climate change.
And now the 16-year-old climate change activist has become one of four people who have won a Right Livelihood Award, also known as the 'Alternative Nobel.'
At 16, she would be the youngest recipient of the award. She would also be the first to win the prize for environmental work since Al Gore.
Thunberg is one of only a few people whose nomination has become known before the Nobel ceremony.
The prize foundation said Wednesday that Thunberg is being recognised “for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts.”
The foundation said that the 16-year-old, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, “personifies the notion that everyone has the power to create change. Her example has inspired and empowered people from all walks of life to demand political action.”
Thunberg received the prize from the Stockholm-based Right Livelihood Foundation established in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation rejected a proposal to create an environmental prize for “inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts," reports AP.
She has slammed accusations that she is paid for her activism or is being “used” by anyone. She wrote on Facebook earlier this year that “there is no one ‘behind’ me except for myself.
"My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation,” the Reuters quotes her as saying.
Thunberg rose to global prominence last year by taking time off school to demonstrate outside Swedish parliament about the lack of action to combat climate change. Inspired by her weekly protest, millions of young people protested around the globe last Friday to put pressure on governments to act.