Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg says she had no desire to discuss the environment with U.S. President Donald Trump at the United Nations climate summit last September, where their brief crossover became part of a now-viral generational feud.
The Swedish climate crusader laughed off Trump’s attacks against her on Monday during an interview as guest editor of BBC Radio’s Today program. Thunberg was responding to the now-infamous “death stare” photo captured at the UN, in which she can be seen glaring at Trump from the background while the president marches past her. Thunberg says talking with Trump would have been pointless at that time.
“Honestly, I don’t think I would have said anything because obviously he’s not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?” she said.
“I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”
The president did not speak to Thunberg when they were in the same room. Instead, Trump mocked her on Twitter several hours later, calling her a “very happy girl with a bright future” after she delivered an angry speech to world leaders about the looming climate crisis.
Trump also ridiculed Thunberg earlier this month after Time magazine chose her over him as person of the year.
Thunberg responded to both of Trump’s online attacks by twisting his words and putting them into her Twitter profile.
“Those attacks are just funny because they obviously don’t mean anything,” Thunberg said on Monday.
“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.”
Since coming into office, Trump has denounced the scientific evidence of climate change, slashed environmental regulations and withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
Thunberg has become a champion for the climate change cause ever since she started skipping school on Fridays at the age of 15 to protest outside Swedish Parliament.
As Thunberg’s movement has grown, right-wing leaders and climate skeptics have lined up to attack her and discredit her message. People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier described her as “mentally unstable” earlier this year, while Brazillian President Jair Bolsonaro has called her a “brat” for being concerned about the deaths of Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest.
Broadcaster David Attenborough applauded Thunberg’s efforts in a Skype interview between the two on Monday.
“You have aroused the world,” he said.
Attenborough also offered his take on why people like Trump are so resistant to her message.
The girl’s father, Svante Thunberg, said she’s done an impressive job handling all the right-wing attacks and fake news that have been directed at her since she rose to international prominence with her school strikes outside Swedish Parliament.
“Quite frankly I don’t know how she does it, but she laughs most of the time,” Svante Thunberg said. “She finds it hilarious.”
The elder Thunberg told the BBC that he has accompanied his daughter on her travels because he cares about her and just wants her to be happy.
“I did all these things, I knew they were the right thing to do,” he said. “But I didn’t do it to save the climate. I did it to save my child.”
He said she’s become quite happy through her activism — and she won’t need him to chaperone her for much longer, as she is due to turn 17 on Jan. 3.
Thunberg said she hopes she doesn’t have to continue leading her global climate strikes, which prompted her to cross the ocean on a ship over the summer to speak about the cause in the United States and Canada.
“I hope I don’t have to be a climate activist anymore,” she said on Monday.
Thunberg added that she’s eager to get back to school in August.
“I just want to be just as everyone else,” she said. “I want to educate myself and be just like a normal teenager.”
—With files from Reuters