Greta Thunberg's fans are upset she didn't win the Nobel Prize, but a peace expert says she should have never been a contender

Anders Hellberg

Greta Thunberg began her youth climate strike movement in Sweden.

• Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden, has become the face of climate change activism.
• Thunberg launched the "Fridays For Future" movement - or School Strike for Climate - last year. It encourages students to skip school to demand action on climate change from their governments.
• The teenager was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, but the award went to Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who brokered his nation's peace with neighboring Eritrea.
• While Thunberg has remained silent about the snub so far, the Nobel committee's selection has sparked outcry on social media. 
• One peace expert explained to the Washington Post that Thunberg was passed over because there "isn't scientific consensus that there's a relationship between climate change - or resource scarcity, more broadly - and armed conflict."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Friday, Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg had been a favorite for the prestigious award. Had she won, Thunberg would have become the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai remains the youngest-ever Nobel laureate, having won the award when she was 17 years old, in 2014.

Thunberg launched the "Fridays For Future" movement - or School Strike for Climate - last year. It encourages students to skip school to demand action on climate change from their governments. The movement earned her a nomination for this year's peace prize in March.

Instead of the teenager, however, the Nobel committee said it selected Ahmed for his "efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation and for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea."

The prime minister worked out the principles for a peace agreement to end the long stalemate between the two countries, the committee added.

Other front-runners included New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern for her decisive response to the Christchurch mass shootings in March and Brazilian indigenous chief, Raoni Metuktire, for his efforts to protect the Amazon.

Thunberg's fans are not happy

Thunberg, who is fairly communicative on Twitter and Instagram, has been oddly silent since the announcement. (Granted, that might have something to do with the fact that she's currently in Denver, Colorado prepping for this week's Fridays For Future climate strike.) 

Thunberg entered the global spotlight over the last year as the leader of a youth movement that's pushing governments and corporations to address the climate crisis. She launched "Fridays For Future" when she was in 9th grade by staging a strike for two weeks outside the Swedish parliament. Now Thunberg spends every Friday on strike.

In March, more than 1 million young people in 123 countries skipped school and took to the streets to support Thunberg's cause. Six months later,  she was joined by an estimated 4 million people in 161 countries during the largest climate change demonstration in history on September 20.

Read more: How 16-year-old Greta Thunberg became the face of climate-change activism

Some of the teenagers most vocal critics, including Good Morning Britain's conservative host Piers Morgan, jumped in to fill Thunberg's silence with remarks of their own about the Nobel Committee's decision.

"How DARE they actually give it to someone who forged peace?!!!!" he tweeted.

Morgan was poking fun at Thunberg's iconic speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month, in which she chastised world leaders for looking to her for hope regarding climate change. "How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words," Thunberg thundered.

But many of Thunberg's fans also took to social media to express their disappointment about the committee's decision.

Since Thunberg's nomination for the Nobel prize in March, her followers and fan base have continued to grow. Some of those supporters, while disappointed by her snub, were quick to mention the teenager's long-lasting impact on the climate debate.

Why didn't Thunberg win?

Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy André Øvstegård, who was among those who nominated Thunberg for the award, told the Guardian that she "has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace."

"We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change, it will be the cause of wars, conflict, and refugees," he said.

However, one peace expert told the Washington Post that it was not entirely a surprise the Nobel committee passed over Thunberg in favor of Ahmed, despite the teenager's overwhelming popularity.

The head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Henrik Urdal, told the Post that he left Thunberg off the Nobel Peace Prize shortlist he suggested to the prize committee because there "isn't scientific consensus that there is a linear relationship between climate change - or resource scarcity, more broadly - and armed conflict."

Reuters

Greta Thunberg at the United Nations.

But that doesn't mean climate change isn't linked to peace. The US Pentagon classifies climate change as a "threat multiplier," meaning that it can worsen other sources of instability and conflict. Heat waves, hurricanes, and other climate change-related consequences like sea-level rise can exacerbate competition for natural resources and ethnic tensions.

Thunberg's possible prize would not have been the first awarded for work that increases climate change awareness - 12 years ago, former US vice president Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change took home the honors. 

But Urdal added that such a pick is even less likely today because the Nobel committee is sticking far more closely to the vision of Alfred Nobel's, the Swedish businessman who founded the awards.

According to Nobel himself, the Nobel laureate needed to be a figure that has advanced the "abolition or reduction of standing armies."

Unfortunately for Thunberg and her supporters, her climate activism just doesn't fit that bill.