Teenage activist Greta Thunberg revealed that talking to U.S. President Donald Trump about climate change during the UN Summit in New York would have probably been pointless.
Thunberg recently made the comment during a BBC Radio 4 interview on Monday, where she was invited as a guest editor, according to The Guardian. During the interview, the 16-year-old activist was asked what she would have said to Donald Trump, who pulled the US from the Paris climate accord, if they've interacted during last September's UN Summit in New York.
Greta Thunberg revealed that she would not have bothered to talk to Trump in the first place. “Honestly, I don’t think I would have said anything,” she responded to the query.
But Thunberg has her reasons for not hypothetically trying to initiate a conversation with the U.S. president. “Because obviously he’s not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?” she countered.
Thus, the only logical thing to do is to say nothing as doing otherwise would be a waste of both their time. “So I probably wouldn’t have said anything, I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” Thunberg concluded.
Thunberg and Trump were not able to interact during the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit held in New York last September. However, the media was able to photograph her giving Trump what people described as a “death glare” which went viral on social media, CNBC reported.
Trump previously attacked Thunberg on social media after she was named as Time magazine’s person of the year. “So ridiculous,” the POTUS wrote on Twitter. “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”
She has also caught the attention of Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro after she commented on Amazon’s deforestation. “It is staggering, the amount of coverage the press gives that brat,” Bolsonaro said to Brazilian journalists.
But Thunberg remains unfazed despite the attacks she received. For her, it’s proof that they are aware of what the young people are capable of once they set their minds to a worthy cause.
“I guess of course it means something – they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don’t want – but that is just proof that we are actually doing something and that they see us as some kind of threat,” Thunberg said.