Dame Vivienne Westwood has said teenage environmentalist Greta Thunberg would make a “great” world leader.

Speaking to The Big Issue, the British fashion designer, who is dedicated to tackling environmental issues, explained that having Thunberg in control of the planet would help reduce carbon emissions.

“If Greta was world controller it would be great,” Westwood said of the 16-year-old Swedish activist.

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“And if I was her adviser, I’d say, ‘The first thing you must do, Greta, is make it a rule that everyone has to reuse their glass bottle, then we can tackle plastic more easily’.”

Westwood, 78, went on to argue that while progress has been made, we still have a long way to go if we’re to tackle climate change and other environmental issues facing the planet.

“We are making some progress, thanks to Greta and the school strikes and Extinction Rebellion,” she said, referencing Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement that prompted children around the world to go on strike from school to protest the lack of governmental action on the climate crisis.

“They’ve forced our Government to declare a climate crisis and set targets,” Westwood continued.

“Having said that, we can’t keep stalling. The targets used to be 2020, now they’re 2050.

“It’s always forever in the future. It’s never here.

“But we’re facing real problems right now, so we need to take action.”

Westwood’s comments come days after Thunberg set sail across the Atlantic Ocean on a two-week journey to attend UN summits on global warming in New York and Chile.

The teenage activist told the BBC that travelling by boat rather than plane shows the world that “the climate change crisis is a real thing”.

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