She is 16 years old and small in stature. But when she speaks, her words have the power to command the attention of world leaders. She has a way of putting them together that turns complex issues into plain, hard truths that pack a powerful punch.
She has addressed the world's most powerful leaders, as well as huge crowds of concerned citizens. She is leading a global movement, the impact of which will resonate long into the future.
You know who I'm talking about. She is Greta Thunberg, a young climate activist from Sweden.
Ms Thunberg burst onto the global stage only recently. It was only one year ago that she decided to skip school on Fridays to stage a solitary protest in front of the Swedish parliament, an act that triggered the "School Strike for the Climate", a new environmental banner.
Now she is spearheading a global movement with millions behind her, travelling the globe to deliver dire warning on the consequences of climate change and make speeches urging world leaders to take action.
Her messages, predictably, make people uncomfortable. She demands that people look the truth right in the face and acknowledge that the world as we know it is in a critical condition -- with extreme weather battering habitats, mass extinction of species, and growing hardships in poor countries that will soon encompass the entire globe.
To underscore the urgency of the issue, she points to a passage in the 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It states that as of Jan 1, 2018, we have 12 years to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide in half. But even if that target is achieved, there's only a 50-50 chance of keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which would bring extreme climate change.
These calculations don't even incorporate the unpredictable consequences of so-called tipping points and feedback loops. In other words, there are volatile factors that could throw the world into utter chaos much sooner than expected.
"So a 50% chance -- a statistical flip of a coin -- will most definitely not be enough. That would be impossible to morally defend," says Ms Thunberg and adds this poignant question:
"Would anyone of you step onto a plane if you knew it had more than a 50% chance of crashing? More to the point: Would you put your children on that flight?"
So there's no other way around it than speaking the truth, uncomfortable as it is. We are living in a world of constant climate flux, going from one extreme to another, and this is the world that Ms Thunberg's generation and those thereafter will inherit from our generation.
Hers is the voice of youth with no political agenda or ulterior motive of any kind, because it is their future that is hanging in the balance.
Yet her rapid rise to fame, her courage to stand up in public to demand action from world leaders, and her knowledge beyond her years of a complex issue have provoked illogical and weird reactions from hordes of people.
They seize upon her youthfulness, the fact she has Asperger's Syndrome, and her birth in a first-world country to hurl personal insults at her and question her motives.
Many of them, of course, are climate change deniers in the mould of US President Donald Trump. But many appear to be simply envious or feel threatened by the solutions necessary to mitigate climate change.
But she sees through them. "When they go after the way I look, or the way I act, it means they have no real arguments," she says. "You can't argue against science, you can't argue against physics."
And it is the banner of science behind which she calls upon all peoples to unite. She takes pains to say her messages are not political views or personal opinions, but scientific facts backed up by thousands of studies around the world.
But scientific understanding could also be a weak point of her campaign. Most politicians have none of the patience required to look deeply into scientific data and understand the issue. Ask them about "tipping points" or "feedback loops" and chances are they'll look dumbfounded and try to steer the conversation to something more familiar, like how to launch useless but expensive projects.
How many people believe that Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha really understood the speech he delivered at the UN meeting on climate change recently?
If he had genuinely understood, he would have ordered several projects, including the Eastern Economic Corridor, halted immediately.
Ms Thunberg has it right. It is the vision of "money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth" that are constantly swirling around in most world leaders' heads and which stand in the way of tackling climate change.
People may call her vision of the world naïve. But what comes from the mouths of babes are oftentimes brutally honest truths.
Wasant Techawongtham is former news editor, Bangkok Post.