STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said Friday she could no longer skip class to draw attention to climate change because she is a high school graduate.
Thunberg, 20, began staging protests outside the Swedish parliament building during school hours on Friday in 2018. Teenagers around the world followed his lead, leading to an international student movement called Fridays for Future.
Because she will no longer be a student, Thunberg noted that her future Friday activities which “technically” will not be a school strike. But in a tweet, she vowed to keep protesting, saying, “The fight has only just begun.”
“We are always going in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice,” Thunberg wrote on Twitter. “We are rapidly approaching potential non-linear ecological and climatic tipping points beyond our control.”
As a teenager, Thunberg was invited to address political and business leaders at UN conferences and the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. She was also named Time magazine’s Youngest Person of the Year in 2019 and received multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
For his last school strike in front of parliament, Thunberg posed with a sign in Swedish while wearing the cap usually worn by high school graduates in Sweden.
American singer-songwriter and poet Patti Smith, who was in Stockholm for a concert on Friday as part of a world tour, showed up at the protest and told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that she had tears in his eyes meeting Thunberg.
“Here is Greta Thunberg, faithfully taking her Friday school strike for climate action. She graduated today, and we extend our gratitude and congratulations,” Smith wrote on Instagram.
Thunberg urged the media to focus on other young activists. Fridays for Future participants planned to demonstrate outside the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany on Friday to urge governments to do more to curb global warming.
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