Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Sets Sail for U.S. in Solar-Powered Yacht

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg sets sail for New York …
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Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg set sail from Plymouth England in a $4.8 million racing yacht to attend a U.N. climate conference in New York.

The latest move by Miss Thunberg has been touted by some as a sign of the teenager’s all-out commitment to the environment, while others have dissed the affair as a silly publicity stunt and elitist virtue-signaling.

The young eco-warrior set sail with great fanfare for her two-week voyage Wednesday afternoon aboard the 60-foot “carbon neutral” racing yacht Malizia II, which has been furnished with solar panels and underwater electricity turbines to ensure that it leaves no carbon footprint.

Thunberg became an environmental superstar in 2018 when she started skipping school every Friday to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament, and this year she will not be attending school at all in order to devote herself full-time to climate change activism.

Her apocalyptic strain of environmentalism has led her to make statements like “we probably don’t even have a future anymore” while she has wished that the indifferent could “feel the fear I feel every day.”

The vessel is piloted by Pierre Casiraghi, vice president of the Monaco Yacht Club, along with German round-the-world sailor Boris Herrmann, and Thunberg is accompanied by her father Svante as well as a filmmaker to chronicle the journey.

Since the Malizia II has no toilet or shower, passengers will relieve themselves into a blue plastic bucket, complete with a biodegradable bag that can be thrown overboard. Meals consist of freeze-dried packets of vegan food, which, mixed with water, will be heated over a small gas stove.

Among Ms. Thunberg’s admirers is Pope Francis, who has called the young activist a sign of hope for the environment.

Others have criticized Thunberg’s yacht trip as a luxury few could hope to imitate or the “most ridiculous virtue signal of recent times,” suggesting that the young Swede is a mentally fragile girl exploited by special interests.

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