Greta Thunberg calls out Roger Federer in eco-clash over sponsor

Swiss tennis maestro Roger Federer has fallen foul of Greta Thunberg’s environmental protest movement, as she called on him to ‘wake up’.

Roger Federer has been criticised by Greta Thunberg over his tenuous links to the fossil fuel industry.

Over Roger Federer’s two decades at the pinnacle of world tennis the game’s elite players have probed away in vain for the chinks in his armour.

Eventually all it took to wrong-foot him was a Twitter hashtag, a stern Swedish teenager and an impromptu knockabout in a Swiss bank branch.

Federer, 38, has declared his “respect and admiration” for Greta Thunberg’s environmental protest movement after she criticised him for his tenuous links to the fossil fuel industry.

Climate campaigners are pressing the former world tennis No.1 to drop his association with Credit Suisse, which has been accused of investing more than 45 billion pounds in companies linked to the oil, gas and coal sectors since 2016.

Students in fancy dress broke into one of the bank’s offices in Lausanne, Switzerland, and began playing tennis in front of a banner that read: “Credit Suisse is destroying the environment. Do you support that, Roger?”

The sporadic breeze of censure swelled into a social media tempest last week as 12 of the protesters were fined a total of 17,000 pounds and their cause was brought to the attention of Miss Thunberg, 17. A message she forwarded to her 3.9 million Twitter followers urged Federer to abandon his deal with the bank, using the slogan “#WakeUpNowRoger”.

The tennis star seems to have been enough of an old hand to recognise a lost cause when he saw one. Three days later he issued a statement insisting that he was on the same side as the protesters.

“I take the impacts and threat of climate change very seriously, particularly as my family and I arrive in Australia amidst devastation from the bushfires,” he said.

“I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the youth climate movement and I am grateful to young climate activists for pushing us all to examine our behaviours and act on innovative solutions. We owe it to them and ourselves to listen.”

Since 2016 @CreditSuisse has provided $57 BILLION to companies looking for new fossil fuel deposits - something that is utterly incompatible with #ClimateAction @RogerFederer do you endorse this? #RogerWakeUpNow pic.twitter.com/ED1fIvb4Cr

— 350.org Europe (@350Europe) January 8, 2020

He added that he “appreciated reminders of my responsibility” and was determined to use “this privileged position to dialogue on important issues with my sponsors”.

He did not, however, say anything specific about the future of his arrangement with Credit Suisse, which is believed to have paid him 5.5 million pounds to be its global brand ambassador. The bank has said that it is updating its “climate strategy” and will no longer put money into coal-fired power stations.

The reaction to Federer’s pledge of fealty was mixed. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung, an influential right-leaning newspaper in Switzerland, praised Federer for striking “precisely the right tone, even though the climate activists will smother it with ever more demands and pressure”.

However, Climate Strike Switzerland, the national arm of Miss Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, urged Federer to act on his words. “We hope he will call on Credit Suisse to get rid of all of its investments in fossil fuels with immediate effect and to withdraw its lawsuit against [the] brave climate activists,” it said.

Federer, who is preparing to compete at the Australian Open in Melbourne, will also join prominent colleagues such as Novak Djokovic, Simona Halep and Maria Sharapova at an exhibition match next week to raise money for a bushfire disaster relief program.

He is not the first famous person to have been needled by Miss Thunberg on social media.

In September she responded to criticism from President Macron of France by tweeting a link to a comedy video titled: “The Greta Thunberg helpline: for adults angry at a child.”

Two months later, after President Bolsonaro of Brazil referred to her as a pirralha, or “little brat”, she briefly adopted the word in the biography section of her Twitter page.

The Times