New York (AFP)

After "missing" the Nobel Peace Prize, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg became the youngest "Person of the Year" at Time magazine on Wednesday, witnessing her ability to mobilize millions of people around the world. around the world around the battle for climate.

Never has the American magazine, which awards this title since 1927, honored someone so young.

Ever since it began strikes in Sweden in August 2018, every Friday in front of the Swedish Parliament, "Greta", as everyone calls it, has inspired growing crowds of young and old, ready to go down. on the streets as part of #FridaysForFuture to call on world leaders to take radical action to limit global warming.

The demonstration was made in September, when massive demonstrations blackened the streets of cities on all continents, sounding the alarm just before a UN summit on climate.

At the summit, the teenager intervened in the gallery with a scathing speech denouncing the inaction of the powerful of the planet, hammering his speech of "How dare you?" accusers.

And glaring at US President Donald Trump, a climate-skeptic who has made the United States the only country in the world to have withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, by which countries were committed in 2015 to reduce global warming to 2 ° C maximum.

This demonstration made her the favorite of bookmakers for the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in October.

At the announcement of the award to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the teenager had shown no disappointment, continuing imperturbably his journey in North America to warn about the "climate emergency".

It has indeed interrupted this year its schooling to travel, focusing on means of zero carbon transport, electric vehicles, trains and boats. It was after 15 days crossing the Atlantic on a sailboat that she had landed in New York in August, and it was on another sailboat that she left in November for Europe, each time with help from volunteer admirers.

She has been at the COP25 climate conference in Madrid for a few days, where she once again denounces the lack of leadership by world leaders, who have been slow to deliver effective commitments to reduce emissions.

- Many detractors -

Greta Thunberg, who has publicly said that she is suffering from a mild form of autism, has the same rhetoric everywhere, even though her frustration seems to have increased in recent months with meetings with leaders who have not made any radical move to the climate.

For his followers, this repetition is his strength. But for her detractors, many also, she is only repeating itself and would do better to go back to school.

Some sometimes attack it violently via social networks, calling it naivete, exaggerating the gravity of the climate crisis or even inventing it, or seeking stardom.

The teenager has tried to calm the game, inviting the more than three million people who follow her on Twitter to respond to insults only with positive messages.

Sign of her efforts to stay modest, she did not react Wednesday to its selection by Time, who chose it from five other finalists: Donald Trump, the leader of the Democrats in the US Congress Nancy Pelosi, the star of the team United States women's football Megan Rapinoe, the CIA agent who warned of the phone call between Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, behind the impeachment proceedings of the president, and Hong pro-democracy protesters Kong.

In 2018, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was posthumously nominated by the magazine, along with other journalists symbolizing the quest for truth and risk. they take to get it.

In 2017, the award was also presented collectively to people who had "broken the silence" about sexual assault, triggering the #MeToo movement around the world.

© 2019 AFP