CLIMATE ACTIVIST GRETA THUNBERG has been named Time magazine's 2019 Person of the Year.
The American publication said she'd earned the award "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."
The 16-year-old from Sweden caught the attention of the world after staging a solo strike against global warming outside Sweden’s parliament last year.
She gained further acclaim after she made a carbon-neutral voyage in a small yacht across the Atlantic in August earlier this year.
She sailed to the US and attended the UN Climate Action Summit in New York following her 15 day trip.
Ever since, she's acted as something of a spokesperson for climate activists around the globe.
Thunberg has been lauded for her frank and straightforward approach to her campaigning, and has staged and taken part in a number of demonstrations around the world over the last few months.
Though it must be said, she's received criticism from sections of the public for being too combative in her approach.
The Swedish activist was in Madrid as the award was announced, at a UN climate forum tasked with saving the world from runaway global warming.
"We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow. That is all we are saying," Thunberg told Time.
The magazine published a photo of their new cover, with the title 'the power of youth'.
"The politics of climate action are as entrenched and complex as the phenomenon itself, and Thunberg has no magic solution," Time wrote in the interview.
"But she has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change."
In winning the award, Thunberg has become the youngest Time Person of the Year in history.
Previous winners include the likes of Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr and even Adolf Hitler.
