Greta Thunberg is bound for the high seas.
On August 14 the teenage climate activist set sail from Britain to New York City aboard the Malizia II, a technologically-advanced racing sailboat that generates electricity using solar panels and underwater turbines. Next month, Thunberg will speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit, before sailing on to a crucial U.N. climate conference in Chile.
You can track her progress across the Atlantic Ocean on the ship's website here (there may be a load time).
"The science is clear," Thunberg said in a statement after announcing the seafaring trip. "We must start bending the [carbon] emissions curve steeply downwards no later than 2020, if we still are to have a chance of staying below a 1.5 [Celsius] degrees of global temperature rise."
To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists globally recommend curbing Earth's warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures; though with still-rising carbon emissions, this specific goal is now far out of reach, if not nearly impossible to achieve.
Airplanes have an outsized role in emitting carbon, as airliners contribute over 2 percent of total global carbon emissions — more than most nations in the world. "Someone flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average person in the EU does by heating their home for a whole year," the European Commission notes.
So Thunberg, who has taken a year off of school to advocate for climate action, is completely avoiding air travel.
Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are now skyrocketing. CO2 levels haven't been this high in at least 800,000 years -- though more likely millions of years. What's more, carbon levels are now rising at rates that are unprecedented in both the geologic and historic record.
