The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg wants to set off on Wednesday from Great Britain on a deep-sea yacht in the direction of New York. The two professional sailors Boris Herrmann and Pierre Casiraghi want to take the 16-year-old across the Atlantic with the special boat “Malizia”. Thunberg’s father Svante and a filmmaker who is planning a documentary are also on board. The journey across the ocean should take around two weeks.
If everything goes according to plan, Thunberg’s team will set sail in the early afternoon (around 3 p.m. CEST) in Plymouth, southern England. “It starts tomorrow,” wrote Herrmann on Tuesday while the German Press Agency was preparing. The exact starting point in the port about three hours by train southwest of London depends on the weather – and the forecasts are currently not optimal. For the noon hours, too strong winds are predicted, which could delay casting by several hours. In the late afternoon, Herrmann could use a small gap to leave before another front should come through.
Thunberg doesn’t sail across the Atlantic out of whim: The Swede wants to take her fight for a more courageous political commitment against the climate crisis and global warming on the other side of the ocean to a new level. In September she will take part in the UN climate summit of many heads of state and government in New York, and in December the annual world climate conference will take place in Chile. Around these two key dates, she wants to take part in climate protests, meet those affected by the climate crisis and other activists and decision-makers. Visits to Canada and Mexico are also planned.
Climate-friendly to the UN conference
Thunberg does not fly because aircraft emit immense amounts of climate-damaging greenhouse gases. That is why she had been looking for a more climate-friendly alternative to travel to America for a long time. At the end of July she announced that she wanted to travel across the Atlantic with the “Malizia”. The boat is equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines that generate the energy required for navigation and communication. On the other hand, there is hardly any comfort aboard the “Malizia”: the boat is equipped for ocean races. There is just enough space below deck for two tubular berths.
The start of the trip coincides almost exactly with the anniversary of the start of Thunberg’s protest: on August 20, 2018, the then 15-year-old sat in front of the Stockholm Reichstag to demand a more ambitious climate protection policy for Sweden and compliance with the Paris climate targets. The international climate protection movement Fridays for Future developed out of the protest action. Thousands and thousands of especially young people have been protesting for more climate protection on Fridays for months, many of them in Germany.
Thunberg’s aim is to rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions so that the rise in global temperature can still be limited to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. To date, the temperature has increased by almost 1 degree compared to the pre-industrial age. The world must listen to science and act accordingly in the fight against the climate crisis, she demands. (dpa)
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