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Greta Thunberg hits out at Angela Merkel and other leaders who want selfies with her to ‘look good’

Greta Thunberg, the environmental campaigner is frustrated by the behaviour of world leaders who want selfies with her to “look good”.

She said Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of the leaders who had queued for a selfie with her.

“To be fair, it was not only her, it was many,” she told the BBC. “And those kinds of things happen all the time. People just want to stand next to me and other climate activists. “They can post it on social media and it makes them look good, it makes them seem like they care.”

Ms Thunberg was referring to what happened after her speech at the United Nations climate change summit last September last year where world leaders looked for every opportunity to have a selfie or photo with her-

Talking to Swedish radio, Ms Thunberg said: “Presidents, prime ministers, kings and princesses came and wanted to talk to me.

“They saw me and suddenly saw the chance that they could take a photo with me for their Instagram account. Then the hashtag #savetheplanet.
“It seemed as if they had forgotten for a moment to be ashamed that their generation had let future generations down.”

The 17-year old environmental activist is not pleased at all by the behaviour of top world leaders to exploit her image. Many of them see her as “someone to stand next to, to look good, and that is something I really dislike because that’s not the sort of person I want to be,” she said.

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