Greta Thunberg ends her school strikes after 251 weeks

For five years, Greta Thunberg spent her Fridays in front of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm instead of in class; after 251 weeks she puts up her cardboard protest sign – as a student.

What started as a 15-year-old with a unique message has grown into a global movement in 7,500 cities.

Ms Thunberg, an activist who has inspired young people around the world to demand action on climate change, graduated from high school in Sweden on Friday, marking what she believes would be her last school strike.

“When I started striking in 2018, I never expected it to lead to anything,” she says wrote on Twitter. “We’re still here and we don’t plan to go anywhere.”

In her five years on the world stage, Ms. Thunberg has gathered her peers; written three books; ran against former President Donald J. Trump; and denounced economic leaders in Davos, Switzerland, for the “climate chaos” they were causing, as well as world leaders at the United Nations for their “business as usual” approach to global warming.

Ms Thunberg said she planned to continue protesting on Friday but due to her graduation it would no longer qualify as a ‘school strike’.

Sweden requires children between the ages of 6 and 16 to attend school. Most Swedish students complete their upper secondary education at the age of 19; Ms. Thunberg, who is 20, took a year off to focus on her work, which included crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat to speak at the UN

Ms Thunberg began striking in 2018, when she demonstrated every day for three weeks with a small group of students outside the Swedish parliament. They decided to keep protesting every Friday and eventually found the group Fridays for the future.

“I look at those in power and wonder how they made things so complicated,” she wrote an essay for The Guardian that November. “I hear people say that climate change is an existential threat, but I watch people carry on as if nothing is happening. We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules need to be changed.”

Ms. Thunberg’s voice as a young student offered clarity and urgency – and people listened.

Her activism paved the way for a day of youth-led climate protests on every continent in 2019. Organizers estimate the turnout at about four million people in thousands of cities and towns around the world. It was the first time that children and young people demonstrated en masse to demand climate action.

In February, Ms. Thunberg told The New York Times that “the world is getting grimmer every day.” On the other hand, she said: “We now have more people who are mobilized and who are in the climate movement, in the fight for climate and social justice.”

That feeling remained true on her graduation day. Ms Thunberg said on Twitter that “a lot has changed since we started” but there is still a long way to go.

“We are still moving in the wrong direction where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth,” she wrote, adding that the world was approaching “tipping points beyond our control.”

It was not immediately clear whether Mrs. Thunberg would enroll in a university. She was not immediately available for comment.

But she recognized her fellow students who, like her, “now wonder what kind of future we are in, even if we did not cause this crisis”.

She said they had a “duty” to keep speaking out.

“To change everything, we need everyone,” she wrote. “We just have to do everything we can. The battle has only just begun.”