The Swedish teenager announced that her Fridays for Future protests would now continue, with school children encouraged to meet up and demand action from the authorities over climate change. But Naomi Seibt, dubbed the anti-Greta Thunberg of climate change, has claimed that children should not be encouraged to miss school to protest, as they have already missed so much education as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. With the world still firmly in the grips of the deadly outbreak, many youngsters from across the planet have been forced to stay at home and not attend school, as nations attempt to stop the virus’ spread.

This led Ms Seibt to demand children do not follow Ms Thunberg’s lead in protesting action on Fridays.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Ms Seibt said: These strikes should not be going ahead, of course, but she is just keeping this going.

“This is just to keep her entire agenda going because she knows it doesn’t make sense.

“Most children didn’t even have school over the last couple of months so they did their online climate strikes, which was again really just something to pose for on Instagram or Twitter, and to show off their climate virtuous.

“But really nobody cared about that, it was just a distraction from everything else going on.”

The Friday for Future protests have been running for two years, and so far there have been 105, including virtual events held when citizens were unable to meet up due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Last month saw around 100 activists join Ms Thunberg in Berlin to protest, just hours after the teen had met with Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel.

The two met to discuss climate change action, and following the meeting, Ms Thunberg said she and other activists “want leaders to step up, take responsibility, and treat the climate crisis like a crisis”.

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When asked whether the coronavirus will be used as “an excuse” for nations to miss their environmentalism targets, Ms Seibt – who agrees that carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of the use of fossil fuels, does affect the climate – argued the attitude of climate change activists was “disgusting”.

She said: “It’s absolutely atrocious.

“I think, they are using it as an excuse and they should never draw conclusions from the coronavirus about climate change because if this pandemic is really that severe, which they claim it is, then you can’t at the same time say ‘there are billions of people affected by this virus, thousands dying, but we’re making progress with climate change’.

“I think that’s disgusting. How can you do that?”