“This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes.”

With one tweet on the morning of December 30th, the 19 year old Swedish climate activist completely obliterated Andrew Tate on the same day of his publicized arrest in Romania, pushing herself into the limelight yet again for her ability to come up with witty comebacks to those who jab at her over Twitter.

Just three days prior on December 27th, Tate a sent out a hostile tweet, tagging Thunberg and clearly trying to draw her ire by saying, “Hello @GretaThunberg I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.” This boast about his car collection seemed to be an attempt at both discrediting and insulting Thunberg and the work that she has done for the future of our planet’s climate, while also flaunting his large car collection and his definition of his own masculinity.

Thunberg’s initial response was a tweet with the provision of a crude email address. However, after Tate’s arrest along with his brother Tristan by Romanian authorities on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group, Thunberg later tweeted, “This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes,” The tweet garnered over 100 million views on Twitter, and even earning a shoutout from Elon Musk, who tweeted, “sheer amount of brand awareness achieved by Greta within a few years is astounding. I think she’s cool tbh.”

Thunberg is one of the most notable climate change activists of the decade, and at 19 years old has been challenging world leaders to adequately respond to the climate change and make changes within their countries since she was 15 and would protest outside of the Swedish Parliament. Since then, she’s spoken at climate change conferences and has become quite the face on social media as a Gen Z champion for combating climate change.

She is also no stranger to taking down cultural and political figures over Twitter, as proven by her many spats with large political figures on the platform. One of the most notable in the past few years was her ongoing feud with former president Donald Trump, during which she jabbed at the politician and used his own condescending words against him, tweeting as he was leaving office that he was “a very happy old man, looking forward to a very bright and wonderful future!” as well as commenting that it was, “So nice to see!”. She has also gone against Vladimir Putin and former Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, with both attempting to diminish and belittle Greta’s agenda and the severity of the current climate crisis.

Tate, a right wing “influencer” and former kickboxer, known for his derogatory and misogynistic remark towards women, was no different of an opponent on the platform, and Thunberg quickly put and end to his remarks with her own comebacks, even with Tate trying to salvage his manly image with a video released ten hours after Thunberg’s initial response. This all contributed to more media attention that already revolved around Tate before his arrest, adding to the publicity of the legal action by Romanian authorities against him and his brother.

For further information on Andrew Tate’s arrest, read here and here.

For more information of Greta Thunberg and her work, read here and here.

If you would like to learn more about climate change and how it affects the planet that we call home, read here and here.

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