Climate activist Greta's stirring speech prompts Trump to troll her
NEW YORK: The impact Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg made has been nothing sort of sensational.
From her moving speech berating world leaders at the UN climate summit, to her steely stare at US President and climate change denier Donald Trump as he arrived.
Memes of that encounter have gone viral.
The Swedish 16-year-old's impassioned speech, in which she repeated the words "How dare you" four times, was the defining moment of the meeting, called by UN chief Antonio Guterres to reinvigorate the faltering Paris climate agreement.
In fact, she made such an impression on Mr Trump that he decided to troll her and ended up being slammed by netizens.
Earlier at the summit, her voice shaking with emotion, she had said: "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones," she said. "People are suffering. People are dying."
To which Mr Trump tweeted a few hours later: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!" alongside a clip of the speech.
The trolling of the teen activist - who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism - racked up more than 16,000 responses in three hours, many of them attacking the US president.
"Donald Trump picking on an innocent young girl is absolutely disgusting!!" wrote one user.
And Greta is not done yet.
She and 15 other young climate activists on Monday filed a complaint with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child alleging that world leaders' inaction on the climate crisis has violated children's rights.
The petitioners, who range in age from eight to 17 and hail from 12 countries, teared up as they presented their complaint at the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) headquarters and gave personal accounts of how their lives and homes have been upended by climate change because of politicians' inaction.
The complaint accuses the respondent countries - Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey - of knowing about the impact of their carbon emissions on the climate and doing nothing to mitigate it. - REUTERS, AFP
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