12 December 2019 - Greta Thunberg named youngest "person of the year" by Time Magazine
Greta Thunberg named TIME's youngest Person of the Year ever
Evie Fordham (Fox Business, 11/12/2019)
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is TIME's 2019 Person of the Year, TIME magazine editor Edward Felsenthal announced Wednesday morning.
"She was a solo protester with a hand-painted sign a few months ago. ... She's taken this issue from backstage to center," Felsenthal said of the Swedish 16-year-old.
"That Thunberg is the youngest individual ever named TIME’s Person of the Year says as much about the moment as it does about her," Felsenthal wrote on Wednesday. "But in this moment when so many traditional institutions seem to be failing us, amid staggering inequality and social upheaval and political paralysis, we are seeing new kinds of influence take hold. It is wielded by people like Thunberg, leaders with a cause and a phone who don't fit the old rubrics but who connect with us in ways that institutions can't and perhaps never could."
The Story Behind TIME's 2019 Person of the Year Cover
Karl Vick (Time Magazine, 11/12/2019)
After returning to Europe by sailboat, Greta Thunberg greeted the throngs of press and young climate activists who trail her everywhere. She rested for a day, then returned to the sea to be photographed for TIME’s Person of the Year cover.
The image was taken by Evgenia Arbugaeva, who grew up in the Russian Arctic, and makes photos of remote, quiet and unlikely beauty. “When TIME asked me to photograph Greta, I was thinking how can I make a portrait that combines gentleness and at the same time courage. How do I capture the intense, focused gaze inwards as well as outwards, which I feel is characteristic of Greta,” she says. “It was not an easy task.”
Arbugaeva wanted a photograph that captured the spirit of the young activist. She started by creating a mood board with references from Botticelli, Monet, Norse mythology, tarot cards, and Romantic period art.
Why Greta Thunberg Is One Of The World’s Most Powerful Women
Maggie McGrath (Forbes, 12/12/2019)
Greta Thunberg is not your typical listee on the Forbes Most Powerful Women rankings.
She is not an elected official, like German chancellor Angela Merkel. She is not a CEO or founder of a company, like Susan and Anne Wojcicki (of YouTube and 23andMe, respectively). And nor is she a perennial entry on one of Forbes’ wealth lists, like Forbes 400 mainstay Oprah Winfrey or Celeb 100 star Taylor Swift.
What Thunberg is: influential in ways that people three and four times her age are not.
Greta Thunberg being named Time person of the year won't stop the climate crisis
Rivkah Brown (The Independent, 11/12/2019)
It speaks volumes of the store our society sets by a woman’s consent that, despite repeatedly saying she does not want awards over her climate activism, we gave Greta one anyway.
Not two months ago, Thunberg declined an environmental prize from the Nordic Council, because “the climate movement does not need any more awards”. Today she will no doubt be thrilled to discover that she has been nominated Time’s person of the year.
Thunberg joins Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Donald Trump in being deemed by the magazine to have, “for better or for worse… done the most to influence the events of the year”. In other words, the award is mostly meaningless, less a way of indicating which people matter than of reminding us that Time magazine still matters. Nevertheless, the nomination reveals a great deal about how the liberal media views the climate crisis.