Greta Thunberg

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (; born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.

Thunberg's activism began when she persuaded her parents to adopt lifestyle choices that reduced their own carbon footprint. In August 2018, at age 15, she started spending her Fridays outside the Swedish Parliament to call for stronger action on climate change by holding up a sign reading ' (School strike for climate). Thunberg initially gained notice for her youth and her straightforward and blunt speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticizes world leaders for their failure to take what she considers sufficient action to address the climate crisis.

Soon other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together they organized 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. To avoid carbon-intensive flying, Thunberg sailed in a yacht 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. She speaks fluent English, and most of her public interactions are in English.

Her sudden rise to world fame made her both a leader in the activist community and a target for critics, especially due to her youth. Her influence on the world stage has been described by ''The Guardian'' and other newspapers as the "Greta effect". She received numerous honours and awards, including an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, inclusion in ''Time'' 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), and nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Early life

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden, the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg. Her paternal grandfather was actor and director Olof Thunberg. She has a younger sister, Beata.

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. The situation made her depressed and as a result, at the age of 11, she stopped talking and eating much and lost in two months. Eventually, she was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), and selective mutism. 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".

Thunberg struggled with depression for almost four years before she began her school strike campaign. When she started protesting, her parents did not support her activism. Her father said he does not like her missing school but said: " erespect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest, and be happy." 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. 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". She was later described as being not only the best-known climate change activist, but also the best-known autism activist. 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.

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. 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. Giving up flying in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer. When interviewed in December 2019 by the BBC
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