Greta Thunberg has spoken up about her “indescribable” meeting with the veteran naturalist and environmental campaigner David Attenborough, who features in her three-part BBC documentary A Year to Change the World.
“Whatever he says you agree with it basically,” the 18-year-old climate activist says in an interview with Radio 1. “I have so much respect for him. He’s done so much in his life, he has so many stories to share.”
She goes on to discuss her admiration for Attenborough for his ongoing efforts to fight the climate crisis, which have also seen him campaign alongside the likes of Billie Eilish and Björk. “Maybe the thing that I admire most with him is that even though he may be a certain age, he still is keeping his mind very open and he has started speaking up,” she adds.
“He has really started to speak up more than he did before and I think that’s really admirable, and that’s something that we should all strive to be like.”
A Year to Change the World details the origin of Greta Thunberg’s school strike, and follows her on her voyage from Europe to America by boat, stopping to examine the effects of climate change across the globe.
Recently, she also urged governments and vaccine developers to fight worldwide vaccine inequity, as the richest countries bought up a majority of doses, leaving poorer regions with restricted access. “It is completely unethical that high-income countries are now vaccinating young and healthy people if that happens at the expense of people in risk groups and on the front lines in low- and middle-income countries,” she said on Monday, at a World Health Organisation briefing.
Her charitable foundation has previously donated €100,000 (or $120,000) to the WHO Foundation, to help fund COVID vaccines for countries where they’re most in demand.
Watch a clip from A Year to Change the World, featuring Thunberg’s meeting with David Attenborough, below.
