Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been honored with a $52,000 environmental prize from the Nordic Council. Her response: Thanks, but no thanks. "The climate movement does not need any more awards. What we need is for our politicians and the people in power start to listen to the current, best available science," the 16-year-old, who is traveling the US, wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. Representatives of her Fridays For Future movement declined the award on her behalf at a ceremony in Stockholm, per CNN and AFP. While she acknowledged the "huge honor" in receiving the annual prize from the organization for inter-parliamentary cooperation among Nordic countries, Thunberg also demanded more from those countries, which "still basically do nothing."
"There is no lack of bragging" among Nordic countries "when it comes to climate and environmental issues," wrote Thunberg, who was nominated for the award by both Sweden and Norway. "But when it comes to our actual emissions and our ecological footprints per capita—if we include our consumption, our imports as well as aviation and shipping—then it's a whole other story." She cited WWF data showing Swedes live lifestyles that would require four planets to sustain. "And roughly the same goes for the entire Nordic region," whose wealthy countries "have the possibility to do the most," she wrote. She concluded that she would only accept the award when "you start to act in accordance with what the science says is needed to limit the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees celsius." (More Greta Thunberg stories.)
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