Greta Thunberg Awarded Author Of The Year By Waterstones For Collection Of Speeches

I dunno about you, but when I was 16, my only real ambitions were to stop studying maths and get my hands on booze.

Needless to say, I won no prizes for pursuing these lofty goals.

But a certain 16-year-old from Sweden by the name of Greta Thunberg has aimed much higher, namely by making it her mission to convince world leaders to take decisive action to fight climate change and preserve the future of all life on Earth.

Not bad going.

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Fair enough then that her efforts have been recognised by book retailer Waterstones who have named her Author of the Year for her aptly-named collection of speeches, No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference.

The book is comprised of speeches she has made over the last couple of years and features notable chapters 'Our House Is On Fire' and 'You're Acting Like Spoiled, Irresponsible Children' - which you may recognise as the speech she delivered to EU leaders in February.

Perhaps her most famous speech though was the one she delivered to the United Nations at the Climate Action Summit in New York City, you know, the one where she said 'how dare you' really menacingly lots of times.

Addressing the most powerful people on the planet, Thunberg said: "This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.

"Yet, I am one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying and entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?

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"For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am I do not want to believe that because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe."

As well as winning the acclaim of a book shop, Thunberg has been heaped with praise from a whole host of celebs, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Still, Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan aren't her biggest fans, so I'm sure she's losing a lot of sleep over that.

Topics: Greta Thunberg, World News, Celebrity

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey