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| Greta Thunberg FRSGS | |
|---|---|
| Thunberg in March 2020 | |
| Born | Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg[1][2] 3 January 2003 (age 18) Stockholm, Sweden |
| Occupation | Studentenvironmental activist |
| Years active | 2018–present |
| Movement | School strike for climate |
| Parent(s) | Malena Ernman (mother) |
| Relatives | Olof Thunberg (grandfather) |
| Awards | Fritt Ord Award (2019)Rachel Carson Prize (2019)Ambassador of Conscience Award (2019)Right Livelihood Award (2019)International Children’s Peace Prize (2019)Time Person of the Year (2019)Nordic Council Environment Prize (declined) (2019)[3]Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity (2020) |
| Honors | Doctor honoris causa, University of Mons |
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Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (Swedish: [ˈɡrêːta ˈtʉ̂ːnbærj] (listen); born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.[4] Thunberg initially gained notice for her youth and her straightforward speaking manner,[5] both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticises world leaders for their failure to take what she considers sufficient action to address the climate crisis.[6]
Thunberg’s activism began by persuading her parents to adopt lifestyle choices that reduced their own carbon footprint. In August 2018, at age 15, she started spending her school days outside the Swedish Parliament to call for stronger action on climate change by holding up a sign reading Skolstrejk för klimatet (School strike for climate). Soon other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together they organised a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were multiple coordinated multi-city protests involving over a million students each.[7] To avoid energy-intensive flying, Thunberg sailed to North America, where she attended the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. Her speech there, in which she exclaimed “How dare you“, was widely taken up by the press and incorporated into music.[8]
Her sudden rise to world fame made her both a leader in the activist community[9] and a target for critics,[10] especially due to her age. The Guardian and other newspapers have described her influence on the World stage as the “Greta effect”.[11] She received numerous honours and awards, including an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, inclusion in Time‘s 100 most influential people, being the youngest Time Person of the Year, inclusion in the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women (2019),[12] and three consecutive nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize (2019–2021).[13][14]
Early life
Greta Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden,[15][16] the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg.[17] Her paternal grandfather was actor and director Olof Thunberg.[18][19]From her TEDx Talk
I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, OCD and selective mutism. That basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary. Now is one of those moments.
— Greta Thunberg, Stockholm, November 2018[20]
Thunberg says she first heard about climate change in 2011, when she was eight years old, and could not understand why so little was being done about it.[21] The situation made her depressed and as a result, at the age of 11, she stopped talking and eating much and lost ten kilograms (22 lb) in two months.[22] Eventually, she was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), and selective mutism.[21] In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Thunberg described the selective mutism aspect of her condition as meaning she “only speaks when necessary.”[21]
Thunberg struggled with depression for three or four years before she began her school strike.[23] When she started protesting, her parents did not support her activism. Her father said he does not like her missing school but said: “[We] respect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest, and be happy.”[24] Her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome was made public nationwide in Sweden by her mother in May 2015, in order to help other families in a similar situation.[25] While acknowledging that her diagnosis “has limited me before”, Thunberg does not view her Asperger’s as an illness, and has instead called it her “superpower”.[26] She was later described as being not only the best-known climate change activist, but also the best-known autism activist.[27] Thunberg commented in 2021 that many people in the Fridays for Future movement had autism, and were very inclusive and welcoming. She thinks that the reason for so many people with autism becoming climate activists is that they cannot look away, and have to tell the truth as they see it: “I know lots of people who have been depressed, and then they have joined the climate movement or Fridays for Future and have found a purpose in life and found friendship and a community that they are welcome in.” She considers that the best thing that has come out of her activism has been friendship and happiness.[27]
For about two years, Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family’s carbon footprint and overall impact on the environment by becoming vegan, upcycling, and giving up flying.[17][28][29] She has said she tried showing them graphs and data, but when that did not work, she warned her family that they were stealing her future.[30] Giving up flying in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer.[24] When interviewed in December 2019 by the BBC, her father said: “To be honest, (her mother) didn’t do it to save the climate. She did it to save her child because she saw how much it meant to her, and then, when she did that, she saw how much (Greta) grew from that, how much energy she got from it.”[31] Thunberg credits her parents’ eventual response and lifestyle changes with giving her hope and belief that she could make a difference.[17] When asked in September 2021 whether she felt guilty about ending her mother’s career she was surprised by the question: “It was her choice. I didn’t make her do anything. I just provided her with the information to base her decision on.”[27] The family story is recounted in the 2018 book Scenes from the Heart,[32] updated in 2020 as Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, with contributions from the girls, and the whole family credited as authors.[27]
Thunberg was a pupil at Franska Skolan, a private school in central Stockholm, from 2010 to 2018,[33][34] after which she transferred to Kringlaskolan, a school in Södertälje.[35] In 2019 she completed the 9th grade (the completion of lower secondary education in Sweden) with excellent grades, 14 As, and Bs in three subjects:[36] Swedish, home economics and physical education.[37]
Activism
Further information: School strike for climate
Strike at the Riksdag
Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament, holding a “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (transl. School strike for climate) sign, Stockholm, August 2018Bicycle in Stockholm with references to Thunberg: “The climate crisis must be treated as a crisis! The climate is the most important election issue!” (11 September 2018)Sign in Berlin, 14 December 2018
In August 2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches for which she has become an internationally recognized climate activist. In an interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, she said she first got the idea of a climate strike after school shootings in the United States in February 2018 led to several youths refusing to go back to school.[17] These teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, went on to organize the March for Our Lives in support of greater gun control.[38][39] In May 2018, Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. In part, she wrote “I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?”[40]
After the paper published her article, she was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland, a group interested in doing something about climate change. Thunberg attended a few of their meetings. At one of them, Thorén suggested that school children could strike for climate change.[41] Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but “no one was really interested”, so eventually she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.[17]
On 20 August 2018, Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided not to attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September; her protest began after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden’s hottest summer in at least 262 years.[24] Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and she protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign Skolstrejk för klimatet (School strike for climate).[42][43]
Thunberg said her teachers were divided in their views about her missing class to make her point. She says: “As people, they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers, they say I should stop.”[24]
Social media activism
Thunberg posted a photo of her first strike day on Instagram and Twitter, with other social media accounts quickly taking up her cause. High-profile youth activists amplified her Instagram post, and on the second day she was joined by other activists. A representative of the Finnish bank Nordea quoted one of Thunberg’s tweets to more than 200,000 followers. Thunberg’s social media profile attracted local reporters whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.[44]
One Swedish climate-focused social media company was We Don’t Have Time (WDHT), founded by Ingmar Rentzhog. He said her strike only began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and posted Thunberg’s photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account, and a video in English that he posted on the company’s YouTube channel.[45] Rentzhog subsequently asked Thunberg to become an unpaid youth advisor to WDHT. He then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, We Don’t Have Time AB, of which Rentzhog is the chief executive officer.[46] Thunberg received no money from the company[45] and terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realized they were making money from her name.[47]
After October 2018, Thunberg’s activism evolved from solitary protesting to taking part in demonstrations throughout Europe; making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilizing her growing number of followers on social media platforms. After the December 2018 general elections, Thunberg continued to strike only on Fridays. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes. That month, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities.[48]
Thunberg spoke out against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2020 and Joint Entrance Examination 2020 entrance exams, which are being conducted in India in September. She said that it is unfair for students to appear for exams in the middle of a global pandemic. She also said that the students of India have been deeply impacted by the floods that hit states such as Bihar and Assam, which cause mass destruction for the citizens.[49]
On 3 February 2021, Thunberg tweeted[50] in support of the ongoing 2020–2021 Indian farmers’ protest. Effigies of Thunberg were burned in Delhi by nationalists who were against the farmer protests; activists were also critical about international interference in India’s internal matters.[51] Greta Thunberg’s tweet received criticism from the Indian government, which said that it was an internal matter.[52] In her initial tweet Thunberg linked to a document which provided a campaigning toolkit for those who wanted to support the farmers’ protest. This toolkit contained advice on hashtags and how to sign petitions but also included suggested actions beyond those directly linked to the farmer’s protest. She soon deleted the tweet, saying the document was “outdated” and linked to an alternative one[53][54] “to enable anyone unfamiliar with the ongoing farmers protests in India to better understand the situation and make decisions on how to support the farmers based on their own analysis.”[55][56] The 22-year-old Indian climate activist who edited the toolkit, Disha Ravi, was arrested under the charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy on 16 February.[57]
Protests and speeches in Europe
Greta Thunberg at the 2019 FridaysForFuture protest in BerlinDina Titus listening to Greta Thunberg discussing the urgent need to address climate changeFurther information: Speeches of Greta Thunberg
Her speech during the plenary session of the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) went viral.[58] She commented that the world leaders present were “not mature enough to tell it like it is.”[59] In the first half of 2019, she joined various student protests around Europe, and was invited to speak at various forums and parliaments. At the January 2019 World Economic Forum, Thunberg gave a speech in which she declared: “Our house is on fire.”[60] She addressed the British, European and French parliaments, where in the latter case several right-wing politicians boycotted her.[61][62] In a short meeting with Thunberg, Pope Francis thanked her and encouraged her to continue.[63] By March 2019, Thunberg was still staging her regular protests outside the Swedish parliament every Friday, where other students occasionally joined her. According to her father, her activism has not interfered with her schoolwork, but she has had less spare time.[64] She finished lower secondary school with good grades.[65] In July 2019, Time magazine reported Thunberg was taking a “sabbatical year” from school, intending to travel in the Americas while meeting people from the climate movement.[66]
Sabbatical year
Further information: Voyage of Greta Thunberg
In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, England, to New York, USA, in the 60-foot (18 m) racing yacht Malizia II, equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines. The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Thunberg’s declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions.
France 24 reported that several crew would fly to New York to sail the yacht back to Europe.[67] The voyage lasted fifteen days, from 14 to 28 August 2019. Thunberg was invited to give testimony in the US House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis on 18 September. Instead of giving testimony, she gave an eight sentence statement and submitted the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C as evidence.[68]
UN Climate Action Summit
At the UN Climate Action Summit
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
— Greta Thunberg, New York, 23 September 2019.[69]Thunberg at the September 2019 Climate March, Montréal
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On 23 September, Thunberg attended the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.[70][71] That day the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) hosted a press conference where Thunberg joined fifteen other children including Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villaseñor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith and others.
Together, the group announced they had made an official complaint against five nations that are not on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey.[72][73] The complaint challenges these countries under the Third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Protocol is a quasi-judicial mechanism which allows children or their representatives, who believe their rights have been violated, to bring a complaint before the relevant ‘treaty body’, the Committee on the Rights of the Child.[74] If the complaint is successful, the countries will be asked to respond, but any suggestions are not legally binding.[75][76]
Autumn global climate strikes
In Canada, Thunberg participated in climate protests in the cities of Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver including leading a climate rally as part of the 27 September Global Climate Strike in Montreal.[77] The school strikes for climate on 20 and 27 September 2019 were attended by over four million people, according to one of the co-organisers.[78] Hundreds of thousands took part in the protest described as the largest in the city’s history. The mayor of Montreal gave her the Freedom of the City. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in attendance, and Thunberg spoke briefly with him.[79] While in the United States, Thunberg participated in climate protests in New York City with Alexandria Villaseñor and Xiye Bastida, in Washington DC with Jerome Foster II, Iowa City, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Denver with Haven Coleman, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation with Tokata Iron Eyes. In various cities, Thunberg’s keynote speech began by acknowledging that she was standing on land that originally belonged to Indigenous peoples, saying: “In acknowledging the enormous injustices inflicted upon these people, we must also mention the many enslaved and indentured servants whose labour the world still profits from today.”[80][81]
Participation at COP25
Thunberg had intended to remain in the Americas to travel overland to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) originally planned in Santiago, Chile, in December. However, it was announced on short notice that COP25 was to be moved to Madrid, Spain, because of serious public unrest in Chile.[82] Thunberg has refused to fly because of the carbon emissions from air travel, so she posted on social media that she needed a ride across the Atlantic Ocean. Riley Whitelum and his wife, Elayna Carausu, two Australians who had been sailing around the world aboard their 48-foot (15 m) catamaran La Vagabonde, offered to take her. So on 13 November 2019, Thunberg set sail from Hampton, Virginia, for Lisbon, Portugal. Her departing message was the same as it has been since she began her activism: “My message to the Americans is the same as to everyone—that is to unite behind the science and to act on the science.”[83][84][85]
Thunberg arrived in the Port of Lisbon on 3 December 2019,[86][87] then travelled on to Madrid to speak at COP25 and to participate with the local Fridays for Future climate strikers. During a press conference before the march, she called for more “concrete action”, arguing that the global wave of school strikes over the previous year had “achieved nothing” because greenhouse gas emissions were still rising—by 4% since 2015.[88][89]
Further activism in Europe
Thunberg speaks to a crowd of over 10,000 people at the 17 January 2020 strike for the climate in Lausanne, Switzerland
On 30 December 2019, Thunberg was guest editor of the BBC Radio’s flagship current affairs programme, the Today Programme.[90] Thunberg’s edition of the programme featured interviews on climate change with Sir David Attenborough, Bank of England chief Mark Carney, Massive Attack‘s Robert Del Naja, and Shell Oil executive Maarten Wetselaar. The BBC subsequently released a podcast[91] containing these interviews and other highlights. On 11 January 2020, Thunberg called on German company Siemens to stop the delivery of railway equipment to the controversial Carmichael coal mine operated by a subsidiary of Indian company Adani Group in Australia,[92] but on 13 January, Siemens said that it would continue to honour its contract with Adani.[93]
On 21 January 2020, Thunberg returned to the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, delivered two speeches, and participated in panel discussions hosted by The New York Times and the World Economic Forum. Thunberg used many of the themes contained in her previous speeches, but focused on one in particular: “Our house is still on fire.” Thunberg joked that she cannot complain about not being heard, saying: “I am being heard all the time.”[94][95][96]
In February 2020 Thunberg travelled to Oxford University to meet Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Pakistani activist for female education who had been shot in the head by the Taliban as a schoolgirl. Thunberg was later to join a school strike in Bristol.[97]
On 4 March 2020, Thunberg attended an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee to talk about the European Climate Law. There she declared that she considered the new proposal for a climate law published by the European Commission to be a surrender.[98]
On 28 September 2021Thunberg criticized world leaders over their promises to address the climate crisis in a speech at the Youth4Climate Summit in Milan. Thunberg also criticized and doubted organizers of climate conferences, saying “They invite cherry-picked young people to meetings like this to pretend they are listening to us. But they are not.”[99]
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic response required behavioral changes including social distancing, quarantine, and face coverings. On 13 March 2020, Thunberg stated that “In a crisis we change our behavior and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society.”[100] Thunberg and School strike for climate subsequently moved their activism and protests online.[101][102] On 20 August 2020, the second anniversary of Thunberg’s first school strike for the climate, Thunberg and fellow climate activists Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adélaïde Charlier met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.[103] They subsequently announced plans for another global climate strike on 25 September 2020. Neubauer said that whether the strike in September is virtual in nature or in the streets will be determined by the global pandemic emergency. At a joint press conference with fellow activists echoing her sentiment, Neubauer said: “The climate crisis doesn’t pause.”[104]
On 14 December 2020, Thunberg used Twitter to criticize the New Zealand Labour Government‘s recent climate change emergency declaration as “virtue signalling“, tweeting that New Zealand’s Labour Government had only committed to reducing less than one percent of New Zealand’s carbon emissions by 2025.[105][106] In response, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and climate change Minister James Shaw defended New Zealand’s climate change declaration as only the start of the country’s climate change mitigation goals.[106][107]
On 29 December 2020, during a BBC interview, Thunberg said that climate experts are not being listened to despite the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of using science to address such issues. She added that the COVID-19 crisis had “shone a light” on how “we cannot make it without science.”[108]
In May 2021, she addressed the COVID-19 crisis again, when she urged a change in the food production system and the protection of animals and their habitats. Thunberg’s comments, which came amidst calls for meat-free alternatives also addressed health concerns regarding animal welfare and the environment. Thunberg said that the way humans are destroying habitats are the perfect conditions for the spread of diseases and noted zoonotic illnesses such as COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, West Nile fever, SARS, MERS, among others.[109]
On 9 August 2021, it was announced that Thunberg would be featured in the inaugural edition of Vogue Scandinavia.[110] The cover was shot by Swedish photography and conservationist duo Iris and Mattias Alexandrov Klum.[110][111] The cover shows Thunberg wearing a trench coat while sitting with an Icelandic horse in a woodland outside of Stockholm.[110] In the interview, Thunberg criticized the promotional campaigns the fashion industry uses to appear sustainable without “actually doing anything to protect the environment” and called the campaigns “greenwashing.”[112] On the same day, she used Twitter to criticize the fashion industry as “a huge contributor” to the climate and ecological “emergency” and “not to mention its impact on the countless workers and communities who are being exploited around the world in order for some to enjoy fast fashion that many treat as disposables.”[113][114] Thunberg’s wearing of wool garnered criticism from fellow vegans. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, she was unaware that the clothing was made of real animal-derived wool.[115]
Sabbatical year ends
On 24 August 2020, Thunberg ended her “gap year” from school when she returned to the classroom. The COVID-19 pandemic severely restricted travel and meetings in 2020 and 2021.[116] Thunberg said: “My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!”[117]