Greta Thunberg

Swedish activist

Greta Thunberg, in full Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, (born January 3, 2003, Stockholm, Sweden), Swedish environmental activist who worked to address the problem of climate change, founding (2018) a movement known as Fridays for Future (also called School Strike for Climate).

Thunberg’s mother was an opera singer, and her father was an actor. Greta was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which is now considered an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is characterized by abnormalities in social interactions (as in classic autism) but with normal intelligence and language development. People with Asperger syndrome tend to focus deeply on one idea or interest, and Thunberg’s cause became climate change. She first learned about the issue when she was approximately eight years old, and within a few years she changed her own habits, becoming a vegan and refusing to travel by airplane. (Both livestock and airplanes emit a large amount of the gases that contribute to global warming.)

Seeking to make a greater impact, Thunberg attempted to spur lawmakers into addressing climate change. For almost three weeks prior to the Swedish election in September 2018, she missed school to sit outside the country’s parliament with a sign that stated “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” (School Strike for Climate). Although alone for the first day of the strike, she was joined each subsequent day by more and more people, and her story garnered international attention. After the election Thunberg returned to school but continued to skip classes on Fridays to strike, and these days were called Fridays for Future. Her action inspired hundreds of thousands of students around the world to participate in their own Fridays for Future. Strikes were held in such countries as Belgium, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands.

Thunberg received numerous invitations to speak about climate change. She gave speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the European Parliament as well as in front of the legislatures of Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In September 2019 her appearance at a UN climate event in New York City—which she traveled to on an emissions-free yacht—drew particular attention for her impassioned comments: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…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!” That month millions of protesters marched in climate strikes in more than 163 countries. While Thunberg was credited with shifting some people’s views and behaviours regarding climate change—her influence was known as “the Greta effect”—she was not without detractors. Brazilian Pres. Jair Bolsonaro notably called her a “brat” in 2019.

In addition to her environmental work, Thunberg was credited with raising awareness about Asperger and inspiring those who had the disorder. While acknowledging that Asperger had hampered her in some ways, she also noted its advantages, at one point tweeting: “I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And—given the right circumstances—being different is a superpower.” No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019) is a collection of her speeches.