In “Moby-Dick,” Ishmael says that “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November of the soul,” when the impulse to knock people’s hats off for no reason gets too strong, it is time to take to the sea. Melville described men “posted like silent sentinels” at the edges of Manhattan, “fixed in ocean reveries.” Last Wednesday, in drizzly August, a crowd of two hundred or so waited at the North Cove Marina, in lower Manhattan, for the arrival of Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate activist from Sweden.
There were reasons to “start growing grim about the mouth,” as Melville put it: the Amazon rain forest was on fire; glaciers were calving into the sea; Tropical Storm Dorian was gathering strength in the Caribbean; scientists were trying to artificially inseminate the last two northern white rhinos on earth; there was lead in the water in Newark. The Endangered Species Act had been gutted, and the E.P.A. had announced new protections not for air or water but for marine diesel engines.
Last year, Thunberg began striking by skipping school every Friday to protest government inaction on climate change, inspiring kids around the world to do the same. On August 14th, she departed from Plymouth, England, on the Malizia II, an emission-free sailboat, to attend a climate summit at the United Nations on September 23rd. (She avoids airplanes, which are among the worst sources of carbon emissions.) During the two-week journey, she had posted several dispatches on Twitter. Early Wednesday morning, she documented her first sighting of the dim lights of New York. “Land!!” she wrote. After clearing customs and immigration while anchored off Coney Island, she waited on the boat for the incoming tide. With no engine, the Malizia had to rely on natural forces to propel it to its landing place.
By 1:30 p.m., a crowd of supporters and international media had assembled at the Malizia’s berth, alongside a gleaming mega-yacht called the Gran Finale. “We’re here to give her a warm welcome to our city,” Spencer Berg, a freckled sixteen-year-old, said. He wore a pin that read “There is no planet B.” Berg, who has organized strikes at his school, credited Thunberg with changing his outlook: he used to be “really mad and depressed about climate change”; now he was “mad and active about climate change.”
On the dock, people turned to the mouth of the Hudson, waiting for the Malizia’s dark sails to materialize out of the gloom. “You can see the Statue of Liberty now, the haze is clearing,” a silver-haired woman said. She wore a pin that read “Granny Peace Brigade.” “I love the life I’ve had, and I love all the creatures,” she said. “It’s our responsibility to be part of this amazing world.” A fourteen-year-old named Alexandria Villaseñor, who has been striking at the U.N. every Friday, had come to greet the boat. She had been exchanging messages with Thunberg, who advised her to bring a sleeping bag and a thermos to each strike when it’s cold. At school, she has arranged to get the assignments she misses from her teachers. “My generation will be so affected to the point where school won’t matter anymore, because we’re running from the next disaster,” she said.
At two-thirty, Thunberg posted a photograph of herself with the New York skyline behind her. A shriek of delight went up. A little girl with a flower crown worthy of a pagan ritual waved a “Welcome Greta!” sign. A woman gave out posters of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. “I’ve got industry, peace and justice, decent work,” she said.
“Do you have gender equality?” a demonstrator asked.
“I have reduced inequality,” the woman offered.
Finally, the thin black line of a sail, tacking slowly back and forth toward the Statue of Liberty, was visible. “Hey, everyone, we see Greta’s boat!” an activist could be heard live-streaming. The youngsters sang a song: “We’re going to strike because the waters are rising. We’re going to strike because the people are dying.”
The boat took more than an hour to make its way to port, in what felt like a very nineteenth-century setting for a very twenty-first-century problem. The Malizia was escorted by a candy-colored flotilla of seventeen small boats whose sails listed each of the U.N.’s goals. Jet Skis and ferry boats made oblivious circles around the little fleet. “Listen to the proof, you owe it to the youth,” the crowd chanted. The boat passed Ellis Island, and soon the words “Unite Behind the Science” could be seen on one sail. A small silhouette on the prow lifted its arm and waved. The crowd cheered and waved back.
As the Malizia drifted in to dock, Thunberg could be observed watching the approach. She wore Crocs and a black waterproof sailing outfit, which had “Greta” printed on the back and “G. Thunberg” on the front. Her hair was in a single braid. She had brought her hand-painted school strike sign all the way from Sweden. It seemed like an occasion where the Mayor should be present, or a brass band, or dignitaries bearing a fruit basket, but no official delegation welcomed Thunberg. She stepped off the boat and onto a floating dock, then ascended a ramp to a stage, where she faced rows of news cameras and handheld phones beaming her arrival around the world. She stood with a placid expression, her hands folded in front of her. The boat’s captain summarized the journey in a clipped German accent, using nautical terminology. “We are extremely relieved that this has all worked out exactly as planned,” he said.
When it was her turn, Thunberg spoke in the precise and measured language for which she has become known. “It is insane that a sixteen-year-old had to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand,” she observed. She reported that not once had she been seasick. She gave words of encouragement to her fellow-activists. She said that after participating in the U.N. strikes she will travel by “trains, buses, and probably even sailing” to Chile, for another U.N. climate conference. A reporter asked what she would miss about being on the water.
“To not have contact with anyone, and to just not have anything you have to do, and to just literally sit for hours and stare at the ocean, not doing anything,” she said. “To be in this wilderness, the ocean, and see the beauty of it—that I am also going to miss.” Then she returned to the boat to get her things. ♦
