Greta Thunberg accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of lining up to take a selfie with her just to 'look good'

• In a Swedish radio series about her campaigning, Greta Thunberg said world leaders took selfies with her to "look good."
• The 17-year-old climate activist name-dropped German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who Thunberg said lined up for a photo with her at the UN Climate Change Summit in New York last September.
• "Perhaps it makes them forget the shame of their generation letting all future generations down," she said. "I guess maybe it helps them to sleep at night."

Greta Thunberg has accused world leaders of taking selfies with her just to "look good," name-dropping German Chancellor Angela Merkel as one of them.

The 17-year-old climate activist made the comments during a series about her campaigning for Swedish radio, an English text of which was made available for the BBC.

Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic to address a special UN Climate Change Summit in New York last September, when she passionately told world leaders: "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words … How dare you!"

According to Thunberg, Merkel lined up for a selfie with her at the event, though, the activist stipulated that "it was not only [Merkel] — it was many."

She said "presidents, prime ministers, kings, and princesses" all wanted to talk to her.

"They saw me and suddenly saw the chance that they could take a photo with me for their Instagram account," she said. "Then the hashtag #savetheplanet.

"Perhaps it makes them forget the shame of their generation letting all future generations down. I guess maybe it helps them to sleep at night."

Per Insider's Aylin Woodward, Thunberg in 2018 launched the Fridays for Future movement, which urged students to skip school to demand action on climate change from their governments.

In November, when she was a ninth grader, Thunberg staged a strike for two weeks outside the Swedish parliament, demanding that the government cut emissions by 15% a year.

Now she spends every Friday on strike. On September 20, she was joined in protest by an estimated 4 million people across 161 countries.

Earlier this year, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second year running.

"Greta Thunberg is a climate activist, and the main reason she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize is that despite her young age, she has worked hard to make politicians open their eyes to the climate crisis," the Swedish lawmakers Jens Holm and Hakan Svenneling said in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, according to The Hill.

The lawmakers said the activist's work toward "reducing our emissions and complying with the Paris Agreement is therefore also an act of making peace."

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• Activists Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai met for the first time
• A conservative group with a history of climate change denial has hired a German YouTuber to challenge Greta Thunberg's 'climate crisis'