Greta Thunberg is quickly becoming the new face of climate change activism, and with good reason: Only the hardest hearts couldn’t be moved by a 16-year-old girl begging older generations to ensure she — and the rest of the globe’s population — doesn’t die a horrible death on a dying planet. On Monday she wound up inadvertently in the room with the Blofeld to her James Bond: Donald Trump boldly crashed the U.N. Climate Summit, and a Reuters cameraperson was there to catch the glowering look she gave him.
Captured by @Reuters Andrew Hofstetter: @GretaThunberg watches Trump arrive at the #UNGA. Thunberg condemned world leaders for failing to take strong measures to combat climate change: ‘You have stolen my dreams’ https://t.co/e9VfOa2kwW pic.twitter.com/kbJqF4rvxc
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 23, 2019
Trump was not scheduled to attend the summit, saying he was busy attending a session on “religious prosecution,” which one assumes addressed his failed “Muslim ban” from his first week in office. Instead, he decided to do both, being a person in power who regularly makes jokes about cold weather disproving climate change, has said climate change is a hoax created in China, and who notoriously pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.
Still, he sauntered into the Summit with a spring in his step that was either oblivious or psychotic. And when Thunberg spotted him, she gave him a cold, hard stare that would turn anyone else into ice.
Climate change is a terrifying prospect, exacerbated by the glee with which deniers — some of whom are currently mocking Thunberg, who, again, is 16 years old — treat any news of environmental setbacks. So when video of Thunberg’s Trump glare, made all the better by one of the most well-timed zooms in motion picture history, hit social media, it was like a salve on a three-degree burn.
Find yourself someone who looks upon your worst enemy the way Greta Thunberg looks at Trump. pic.twitter.com/euhZ51abAB
— Joel Berkowitz (@JoelBerkowitz) September 23, 2019
Video of the year: @GretaThunberg , the 16-year-old environmental activist, side-eyeing Trump on behalf of all of us at the Climate Summit.
YES QUEEN 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/p6HKm7mHNm— Saint Hoax (@SaintHoax) September 23, 2019
Greta Thunberg’s glare at Donald Trump is giving me the energy to get through this Monday pic.twitter.com/xdM0rdI2ln
— Sam Stryker (@sbstryker) September 23, 2019
Prepare yourselves for a meme that will be run into the ground for *days* to come. pic.twitter.com/Ed3ssuuDgl
— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) September 23, 2019
https://twitter.com/normwilner/status/1176181449223004167
https://twitter.com/wharsmetoothpic/status/1176184792230047745
https://twitter.com/davidehrlich/status/1176189360229822465
https://twitter.com/SocialistChris/status/1176178866408382468
Can you nominate a gif for an Oscar? pic.twitter.com/0lMEDZ2Qoa
— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) September 23, 2019
This is like a clip from a special episode of The Office where everyone dies from climate change pic.twitter.com/Q0aAxXmrDn
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) September 23, 2019
Thunberg, who hails from Sweden, was one of the main attractions of the Summit, during which she gave a stirring, forceful, take-no-prisoners speech aimed at…well, everyone who isn’t doing something about climate change.
Greta Thunberg to world leaders at the U.N. climate summit: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words” https://t.co/vhK7qb7Dgb pic.twitter.com/kArrseEu9f
— TIME (@TIME) September 23, 2019
“You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” she said. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.”
Thunberg grew more and more emotional as she went on, but she lost none of her fire. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she told the Summit, and the world. “How dare you?”
(Via Time)