HuffPost
Greta Thunberg Explains Why She Won’t ‘Waste Time’ Talking To Trump.
Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish climate change activist, has no plans to meet or talk with President Donald Trump when she attends the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York next month.
“Why should I waste time talking to him when he, of course, is not going to listen to me?” Thunberg told CBS in an interview shared online Tuesday. “I can’t say anything that he hasn’t already heard.”
The 16-year-old was asked in the clip (below) how she would rate America’s efforts to combat climate change. It’s “not very high,” she said.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the concept of climate change, calling it a Chinese hoax and “bullshit,” and his administration is pursuing a decidedly anti-environmental agenda. In 2017, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on combating the climate crisis.
Thunberg will travel to the U.S. aboard the 60-foot solar-powered yacht Malizia II with her father and a film crew. The zero-emission vessel is scheduled to set sail from Plymouth in southwest England on Wednesday afternoon. The journey is expected to take two weeks.
The trip signals that “the climate change crisis is a real thing,” said Thunberg, who has risen to global prominence with her weekly anti-climate change school strikes.
“By doing this it also shows how impossible it is today to live sustainable,” she explained. “That, in order to travel with zero emissions, that we have to sail like this across the Atlantic Ocean.”
After her time in the U.S, she plans to travel by low-carbon transportation (including buses and trains) to Canada, to the U.N. climate talks in Santiago, Chile, in December and to other countries in South America.
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AFP
Cramped and basic: Greta Thunberg’s voyage to New York
Plymouth (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Facing two weeks at sea, eating freeze-dried food and using a bucket as a toilet, Greta Thunberg admits a racing yacht is not the most comfortable way to cross the Atlantic.
But the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist is ready to take the only transport she can that produces hardly any emissions to get to a UN climate summit in New York.
“I went out test sailing yesterday and it was very fun. So I think it will be quite an adventure,” she told AFP aboard the 60-foot (18-meter) Malizia II racing yacht, moored in the southwestern English port of Plymouth.
It was her first time sailing, and she did get seasick, but she said “you have to expect that”.
Pierre Casiraghi, a member of the Monaco royal family, has offered the yacht’s services for free for the 3,000 nautical miles to New York and will skipper it with German sailor Boris Herrmann.
A monohull racing yacht with foils that help it lift out of the water, Malizia II was built in 2015 but has since been fitted with state-of-the-art solar panels and underwater turbines.
They generate more than enough electricity to power its navigation instruments, autopilots, water makers and an on-board ocean laboratory that tests the water for CO2 levels.
Inside it is dark, cramped and functional.
It has been slightly adapted for Thunberg, who will be travelling with her father Svante and a filmmaker, with the addition of two hammock-style bunks, mattresses and curtains.
There are no cooking facilities, beyond a small gas stove to heat up water to rehydrate freeze-dried packs of vegan food — the only fossil fuel used on board.
The toilet is a blue plastic bucket, inscribed in black pen with the words “Poo Only Please” which is used with a biodegradable bag that can be chucked overboard when used.
“The living technique on this boat is a bit like a camping situation in the mountains, you have a mattress and a sleeping bag, a head torch and that’s it,” said Herrmann.
– ‘Unheard of’ –
He admits that some people think it is “crazy” to take three people with no sailing experience on such an arduous journey, but says he has no fears for their safety, only their comfort.
Herrmann has sailed around the world three times and will be supported by a team on land, monitoring the boat’s movements and weather.
The yacht can travel at up to 35 knots (70 kilometers) an hour, but Hermann says they will take it a little easier, averaging more like 10 knots (20 kilometers per hour) throughout the journey.
He is also taking a slightly longer route than usual to try to avoid the worst of the storms.
While it is designed to tilt for a faster, smoother ride, Malizia II — named after Casiraghi’s ancestor who took over Monaco, known as the “wily one” — has a 4.5 meter canting keel, which makes it hard to tip over.
“Safety is not really an issue,” Herrmann told AFP on board, as he made his final preparations.
“It’s more that this is something that has never happened before, that someone with zero sailing experience goes on such a boat across the Atlantic — it’s unheard of.
“That just shows something about Greta — many of the things she does are unheard of.”
Thunberg herself is not scared, saying she is only concerned about not getting in the way.
“I think I will spend my time reading a lot, and sitting and looking at the ocean lots. And just go around the boat,” she said.
The yacht has a tiller that can be used manually, but the technology on board makes it more like flying a plane than sailing.
“The autopilot is on, the boat is sailing and then we look at the weather forecast and the energy production and consumption, we check if all the systems work well, we keep (a) look out,” Herrmann said.
“For that we take shifts, probably one hour on, one hour off, we alternate sleeping.”
“The objective is to arrive safe and sound in New York,” he adds.
The Telegraph
Greta Thunberg sets off for the US on carbon neutral yacht, but says she doesn’t expect to win over Donald Trump
Greta Thunberg has said she doesn’t expect to win over Donald Trump to her climate change campaign as she embarked on a two week carbon neutral journey across the Atlantic from Plymouth to New York.
Before setting off, the 16-year-old Swede said she would simply “ignore” climate skeptics and that “there are always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science.”
At a blustery marina in Plymouth, Thunberg said that she was excited about her two week voyage on board the 60 ft racing yacht Malizia II, and that despite feeling seasick on a test sail, she is “excited to see what happens.”
There is no fridge, no heating and no washing facility on the boat. For ablutions, there is a blue bucket marked ‘poos here please’. But the 16-year-old Swede couldn’t be happier.
Travelling with her father Svante, two experienced skippers and a documentary maker, Thunberg says she has only packed a box of freeze-dried vegan meals, eight writing journals, some books and no change of clothes.
Thunberg is travelling to New York, where she will speak at the UN climate summit on September 23 and then spend a number of months travelling around the Americas, raising awareness of the climate crisis.
Today, she told The Telegraph that she didn’t believe that President Trump would listen to her.
“If no-one else has succeeded, I’m not that special. I can’t convince everyone, so instead of speaking to me and to the school striking children and teenagers, he should be talking to actual scientists and experts in this area,” she said.
On climate skeptics, she added: “There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.”
Thunberg clutched a metal re-usable water bottle as she boarded the Malizia II this afternoon. The boat is captained by Boris Hermann, a 38-year-old German who has sailed it around the world.
It reportedly cost more than £4m to build and has solar panels and underwater turbines to generate the electricity needed to power the instruments on board.
There is an emergency combustion engine, in accordance with maritime safety measures, but there are no plans to use it.
Thunberg is being joined on the voyage by her father, Svante, Pierre Casiraghi, head of the Malizia II racing team and the grandson of Monaco’s late Prince Ranier III and actress Grace Kelly, as well as Swedish documentary filmmaker Nathan Grossman.
The boat left Plymouth just after 3 pm to crowds of well-wishers on the marina pontoons and along the shoreline.
Thunberg, still only 16 years old, began protesting outside the Swedish parliament just a year ago, demanding immediate action to combat climate change after the most severe wildfires in the country’s history.
Her movement, dubbed: “school strike for the climate” captured public attention, and by March this year, some 1.4 m students at schools in 112 countries across the world were walking out of lessons on Fridays in order to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
The trailblazing teen has spent the summer crossing Europe by train in a bid to spread her message, telling world leaders in Davos: “I want you to act like the house is on fire. Because it is.”
She received a round of applause from British MP’s when visiting parliament in April and has had audiences with Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
While the transatlantic crossing will be a test of endurance, Thunberg has faced many personal challenges already in her short life. Diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and selective mutism, the teenager suffered from depression earlier in her childhood.
“I’ve had my fair share of depressions, alienation, anxiety and disorders,” she wrote on Facebook recently.
“But without my diagnosis, I would never have started school striking. Because then I would have been like everyone else.”
Now, after being listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and would become its youngest ever winner, if she is chosen in October.