Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg (FRSGS)
Born	(2003-01-03) 3 January 2003 Stockholm, Sweden
Occupation	Left-wing political and social activism, Green movement
Years active	2018–present
Movement	School strike for climate
Relatives	Malena Ernman (mother) Svante Thunberg (father) Olof Thunberg (grandfather)

Greta Thunberg (born 3 January 2003) is a far-left Swedish political activist, who is best known for demanding major social changes and increased governmental controls of all aspects of the world economy, in order to counter the claimed threats of global warming.

Thunberg first became known in 2018 when, at age 15, she began spending her school days outside the Swedish parliament to call for stronger climate action by holding up a sign saying (in Swedish) "School strike for climate". Soon, other students engaged in similar protests elsewhere, supported by various existing activist groups. Together they organized a so-called school climate strike movement, under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes were arranged every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were at least two well-coordinated multi-city protests involving over a million students each.

Thunberg became well-known for her blunt speech, and far-reaching (albeit vague) social and political demands, at various protests and political assemblies, in which she urges new laws and restrictions to address the climate crisis. Thunberg also convinced her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their carbon footprint, including giving up air travel and not eating meat.

Her sudden rise to world fame in 2019 made her a target for memes. In May 2019, Time magazine described her as a "next generation leader" and role model. Thunberg and the school strike movement were also praised in a 30-minute Vice documentary titled Make the World Greta Again. Progressive activists have described her impact as the "Greta Thunberg effect". Critics allege she is a puppet for powerful progressive interest groups who support her activism, including George Soros's and Al Gore's foundations, though her supporters deny this. Despite her association with progressive politics, she received almost entirely positive coverage in mainstream media stories. Thunberg was also nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, which she did not receive. However, on December 11, 2019, she was lauded as Time magazine's person of the year.

Life

Greta Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003 in Stockholm, the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg. Her paternal grandfather is actor and director Olof Thunberg.

Thunberg says she first heard about climate change in 2011, when she was 8 years old, and was angered by the lack of political action to counter it. Three years later she became depressed and lethargic, stopped talking and eating, and was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), and selective mutism. While acknowledging that her diagnosis "has limited me before", she does not view her Asperger's as an illness and has instead called it her "superpower".

Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family's carbon footprint, which eventually meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer. The story is recounted in the 2018 book Scenes from the Heart.

In late 2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches for which she became a well-known climate activist. Her father 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". Thunberg says her teachers are divided in their views about her missing class to make her pointt, claiming: "As people they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers they say I should stop."

Thunberg published a collection of her climate action speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, in May 2019 with the earnings donated to charity. She described her selective mutism as meaning she "only speaks when necessary". In 2019, Thunberg also contributed a voiceover for a release of "The 1975", the theme song of an English band by the same name, urging: "So, everyone out there, it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel."

Transatlantic voyage

In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, UK, to New York, US, in a 60 ft racing yacht 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 take the yacht back to Europe. The yacht's co-skipper would return to Europe by plane. The voyage lasted 15 days, from 14 to 28 August 2019.

On 23 September 2019, Thunberg was filmed glowering at president Trump at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York City. Earlier, she had addressed the UN General Assembly:

"This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me 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 fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

Trump, who attended another event for ten minutes, tweeted a video of her remarks and commented: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"

School strike for climate

Main article: School strike for climate

Thunberg said the climate strike was inspired by activism triggered by the school shootings in the United States in February 2018 in support of gun control.

In May 2018, Thunberg wrote “I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?” She was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland. Thunberg attended some of their meetings, and Thoren suggested that school children should strike for climate change. Thunberg tried to persuade fellow students to get involved but "no one was really interested" so eventually, she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.

Beginning

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. 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 the climate). She also handed out leaflets that stated: "I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future."

Organizing social media

Thunberg posted her original strike photo on Instagram and Twitter and other social media accounts quickly took up her cause. Her strike began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and then posted Thunberg's photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account.

After the general elections, Thunberg continued to strike on Fridays. Other school students across the globe were then organized to arrange their own student strikes. As of December 2018, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities.

After October 2018, Thunberg took part in demonstrations throughout Europe; making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilizing followers on social media platforms. By March 2019, she was still staging regular protests outside the Swedish parliament every Friday. Her activism has not interfered with her schoolwork, but she has had less spare time.

Thunberg's message

Thunberg claimed that the crisis caused by global warming is so serious that humanity is facing an existential crisis, "that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.” She said: "You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to." Thunberg also states that we need to wake up and "change". She says the situation is so dire, we should all panic. stating in 2019 that "according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes."

At Davos she said: "Some people, some companies, some decision-makers, in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people." "I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is". In London she said: "We're facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children."

Thunberg stated that greenhouse gas emissions curve need to start declining steeply no later than 2020. In January 2019, she told the UK parliament that Britain needs to stop talking in terms of "lowering" emissions and start thinking in terms of eliminating them. In February 2019, at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee, she said that the EU must reduce their CO₂ emissions by 80% by 2030, double the 40% goal set in Paris.

Thunberg's main message is that everyone needs to "unite behind the science", which has been criticized by right-wing opponents. One criticism is that most global warming research is closed access and unavailable to the public. She said that if everyone listened to the scientists and acknowledged their interpretation of the facts, "then we (students) could all go back to school". She criticized Donald Trump, admonishing him to "listen to the science".

Thunberg inspired praise on mainstream media and progressive social media that were dubbed the "Greta Thunberg effect". Britain's secretary for the environment, Michael Gove, said: "I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents' generation, and I recognise that we haven't done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create." UK Labour politician Ed Miliband said: "You have woken us up. We thank you. All the young people who have gone on strike have held up a mirror to our society … you have taught us all a really important lesson. You have stood out from the crowd."

Wealthy donors and investors contributed almost half a million pounds to support Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups to establish the "Climate Emergency Fund". Trevor Neilson said the three founders would be contacting friends among the global mega-rich to donate "a hundred times" more.

In February 2019, Thunberg shared the stage with President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who said “In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change”.

Criticism

In an opinion column, Christopher Caldwell has claimed that Thunberg's simplistic, straightforward approach to climate change will bring climate protesters into conflict with the complexities of decision-making in Western democracies. The French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven claims that many people "buy virtue" with their support for Thunberg but do not actually do anything to help.

In July 2019, Agence France-Presse reported that OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) secretary-general Mohammed Barkindo "complained of what he called 'unscientific' attacks on the oil industry by climate change campaigners, calling them 'perhaps the greatest threat to our industry going forward'", and said he was apparently referring "to the recent wave of school strikes inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg's 'Fridays for Future' movement". Thunberg and other climate activists responded by calling his remarks a badge of honour.

In the United States, opinion writer Tiana Lowe, of the Washington Examiner, stated that Thunberg's "fame-seeking", "stage-parents", particularly her "fading opera starlet mother" who performed internationally, were "pimp(ing) her out" without regard for Thunberg's alleged mental problems, which included Lowe's long list of disabilities, by which Greta and her sister were claimed to be handicapped. By so doing, Lowe wrote, they were subjecting her to "child abuse."

Swedish opinion writer Paulina Neuding invoked mental health issues to question the idea that Thunberg should be leading climate change activism. Thunberg has also been criticised by the Australian climate-change denier Andrew Bolt after Thunberg announced she would travel to the United States in a carbon-zero yacht. Bolt said she had a cult following, calling her "freakishly influential" for a "girl so young and with so many mental disorders".

Following Thunberg's filing of a lawsuit against France, Germany and other countries for not being on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges, French president Emmanuel Macron criticized her, saying that "such radical positions (as held by Thunberg) antagonize our societies". He added that "she should focus on those that are blocking, those that are the furthest", and that "he doesn't feel like either the French or the German governments are trying to block". French secretary of state for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Brune Poirson also criticized her, saying that "she doesn't know what solutions she is putting forward", adding that "you can't mobilize with despair, even hate".

Legal actions

Thunberg, et al, v. Argentina, et al

On 23 September 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) hosted a press conference with Thunberg and other activists to announce a lawsuit 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. The lawsuit is challenging the nations under the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child (specifically the right to life, health, and peace). If the complaint is successful, the countries will be asked to respond, but any suggestions are not legally binding.

External links

• Greta Thunberg on Facebook
• (A compilation of Thunberg's speeches, featuring both video and text)
• (A compilation of Thunberg's speeches and interviews, along with IPCC Reports)
• Appearances on C-SPAN