Climate Activist Greta Thunberg to Rally in Denver on Friday

One of the stars of a global wave of youth-led climate activism will bring the "Fridays for Future" movement she has helped inspire to Denver on Friday, October 11.

Greta Thunberg, a sixteen-year-old Swedish activist who rose to fame after her confrontational speech at the United Nations climate conference went viral in 2018, will headline a rally beginning at noon Friday in Civic Center Park, organizers have announced.

The event will come three weeks after a September 20 Climate Strike event that saw more than 5,000 Denverites, many of them high school students, march through Denver and rally at the State Capitol in support of stronger government action on climate change.

Thunberg, who arrived in the U.S. in August after a fifteen-day voyage in a zero-emissions sailboat, spoke at a rally in New York alongside Boulder activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. Organizers estimate that more than four million people around the world participated in the September 20 strike.

Fridays for Future, also known as the school strike movement, has been pioneered in large part by Thunberg, who began demonstrating outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018.

Last month's Climate Strike events were timed to coincide with a U.N. Climate Action Summit held in New York, where Thunberg gave a tearful speech attacking world leaders for not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt climate change, which she said was a "betrayal" of young people, who will have to live with the consequences.

"The eyes of all future generations are upon you," Thunberg said. "We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not."