Climate activist Greta Thunberg is Time ‘person of the year’

NEW YORK (AP) — Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time’s youngest “person of the year” on Wednesday.

Greta Thunberg has been named Time’s youngest “person of the year.”

Thunberg, 16, has become the face of the youth climate movement, drawing large crowds with her appearances at protests and conferences over the past year and a half. Some have welcomed her activism, including her speeches challenging world leaders to do more to stop global warming. But others have criticized her sometimes combative tone.

“For sounding the alarm about humanity’s predatory relationship with the only home we have, for bringing to a fragmented world a voice that transcends backgrounds and borders, for showing us all what it might look like when a new generation leads, Greta Thunberg is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year,” the media franchise said Wednesday on its website.

“She became the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year, coming from essentially nowhere to lead a worldwide movement,” Time editor in chief Edward Felsenthal said as he announced the pick on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday morning.

Thunberg represents a broader trend of young people pushing for change, Felsenthal said, pointing to another finalist for this year’s distinction, the Hong Kong protesters who have spent months in the streets calling for democratic reform.

Three people at the center of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump — including the president himself — were also in the running for Person of the Year.

The five finalists include Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the anonymous American official whose whistleblower complaint helped set the impeachment inquiry in motion.

Thunberg was in Madrid on Wednesday, where she addressed negotiators at the U.N.’s COP25 climate talks.

Last year’s Time winners included slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi; the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, where five people were shot to death; Philippine journalist Maria Ressa; and two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.

Material from the Washington Post was also used in this report.