From Zero to Hero: Understanding The Phenomenon of Greta Thunberg

Ativist Greta Thunberg once said that “All you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”. Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who rose to fame in 2018 for her efforts of bringing awareness to climate change by initiating the Fridays for Future movement, which is an organisation that forms strikes for children in school (during school time) that is held internationally. Thunberg went on to make many fierce speeches at climate events after the organisation went viral online, including speaking at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019.

Greta was born on the 3rd of January of 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden. She was raised by her father Svante Thunberg, who is know for the movie Skärgårdsdoktorn (1997) and her mother Malena Ernman who is a famous Swedish opera singer. Malena earned international fame when she represented Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow (2009). Greta also grew up with her younger sister Beata Thunberg who was born in 2004. She followed her mother’s footsteps into becoming a famous singer in Sweden. Greta and Beata both share the condition of OCD, along with Greta also having been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

She first learned about the climate changing when she was eight years old, she said she couldn’t understand why so little was being done about it. She stated, “I kept thinking about it [climate change] and I just wondered if I am going to have a future”. By the age of eleven she felt so stressed about the issue that she stopped eating, growing and speaking (condition known as selective mutism). After feeling so helpless, Greta decided that she needed to make a positive change. She convinced her family to start making environmentally friendly choices (including stopping traveling by plane). That also meant convincing her mother (as she was an international opera singer) to stop travelling for her career, which her mother agreed to stop flying and to only perform in Stockholm.

Her first step into making a difference was that she entered in a climate writing competition held by a Swedish newspaper in 2018. Greta entered her essay ‘We know- and we can do something now’, it was later announced she was one of the winners for the competition. That essay was published in the newspaper, which was one of the first minor, yet still important impacts towards helping the cause. After getting her essay published, Bo Thorén (a climate activist) reached out to Greta to try and help her raise awareness towards the issue. Bo told Greta about a group of teenagers in Florida, USA who were striking to change the gun laws after there was a school shooting earlier on in the year. That made Greta feel inspired and wanted to do the same in Sweden for climate change. So, on August 20th in 2018, Greta held the first school strike for climate change. Greta decided to go alone as no one wanted to go with her. She sat down on the floor outside the Swedish Parliament and was there for the full length of a school day. Sitting on the floor, she held a sign with the now- famous words ‘Skolstrejk for Klimatet’ (School Strike for Climate). Greta posted a few pictures on her Twitter and Instagram, which started to gain some traction. The following day when she went to go strike, she was not alone. People started to join her strikes, lasting until the Swedish National Election which was held 21 days after Greta started her strike.

After a while, the school strike started to gain a lot of popularity all over the world. Because of the popularity, Greta started to make speeches across the world. It was mainly aimed at world leaders for not caring about the issue. She also went to some of the strikes in support of the cause. In March of 2019, an international school strike was held with 1.6 million people taking part of it from 2,233 cities in 128 countries. A few days before the strike, it was announced that Greta was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, which would have made her the youngest person to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize if she had won (lost to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed). Later in 2019, Greta attended the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. She travelled from Sweden to New York by boat which took her 2 weeks to travel across the ocean. It was all worth it for her as Greta delivered the most powerful and emotional speech she has ever delivered.

From being an eleven-year-old and being so upset about climate change to being in the has made extreme efforts in trying to save our planet, inspiring millions of people around the world to make an effort to save our environment. She has said she’s not stopping anytime soon. Greta’s plans for the future are to keep going to more and more school strikes and to visit regions that are most affected by climate change. Greta has been an inspiration to everyone fighting for climate change, she has said she isn’t a climate scientist, just the spokesperson n for a cause so little is being done about.