Ultima_Gaina/iStock(NEW YORK) — Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has inspired young people around the world to strike in masses, anchored in New York on Wednesday morning after two weeks at sea.
The 16-year-old took a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean, from the United Kingdom, to reach New York City for the upcoming United Nations Climate Action Summit, hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sept. 23.
To ensure that her trip from Europe to America did not have an outsized environmental impact, Thunberg, who is Swedish, traveled in a zero-carbon-emission racing yacht, named the Malizia II.
“We have anchored off Coney Island – clearing customs and immigration,” she tweeted Wednesday morning just after 9 a.m. “We will come ashore at North Cove Marina earliest 14:45 tide allowing.”
We have anchored off Coney Island – clearing customs and immigration. We will come ashore at North Cove Marina earliest 14:45 tide allowing. pic.twitter.com/t6yy5z2asp
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 28, 2019
Earlier Wednesday, Thunberg tweeted a grainy image showing the “lights of Long Island and New York City,” along with an excited, “Land!!”
Land!! The lights of Long Island and New York City ahead. pic.twitter.com/OtDyQOWtF5
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) August 28, 2019
Thunberg documented her journey in regular tweets, including tales of both pleasant and bumpy conditions, dolphin sightings and life aboard the 60-foot boat.
“At sea you really loose sense of time and you can’t separate the days,” she tweeted on the eighth day of her trip. “You sleep, eat, look at the ocean.”
Thunberg gained international attention with student protests that she started last August. Initially, she demonstrated on her own in front of the Swedish Parliament, and after images of her went viral, other students all around the world joined in on “Fridays for Futures,” striking from school to demand action from adults on climate change.
The Malizia II was “fitted with solar panels and hydro generators,” Thunberg wrote on Twitter, and “also has an onboard lab to measure ocean surface CO2 and water temperature in cooperation with Max Planck institute.”
“During the past year, millions of young people have raised their voice to make world leaders wake up to the climate and ecological emergency,” Thunberg said in a statement before starting her trip. “Over the next months, the events in New York and Santiago de Chile [the U.N. Climate Change Conference] will show if they listened.”
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