Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg will appear on a postage stamp in her native Sweden, which is part of a series on the environment to be published on Thursday.
STOCKHOLM – Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg will appear on a postage stamp that will be issued on Thursday in her native Sweden and is part of a series focusing on the environment.
The motifs on the stamps “should reflect our time, where the environmental issue has been relevant and present for many years, not just through the strong voice of Greta Thunberg,” said Swedish postal company Postnord in a statement.
One with Thunberg in his yellow raincoat, his trademark, with his braid waving in the wind and on top of a hill, is part of a series of five stamps with the theme “Valuable Nature”. They cost 12 SEK ($ 1.40) each, are available from January 14 and are illustrated by Swedish artist Henning Trollback.
Thunberg, who just turned 18, gained prominence in weekly solo protests outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, which started on August 20, 2018.
Students around the world soon began to follow her lead, holding large, regular protests, and she was invited to speak to political and business leaders.
The coronavirus outbreak prevented the Fridays for Future movement, inspired by Thunberg, from holding its mass rallies in recent months, reducing its visibility.
His harsh words to presidents and prime ministers, peppered with scientific facts about the need to urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions, won praise and awards, but also criticism and even death threats.
Appearing on a stamp “means that a person is doing something extraordinary,” said Kristina Olofsdotter, managing director of stamps at the postal company.
Thunberg demands that lawmakers follow the Paris climate agreement in 2015, which asks rich and poor countries to take measures to curb the rise in global temperatures that is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns. It requires governments to come up with national plans to reduce emissions in order to limit the rise in global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
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