At 20, climate activist Greta Thunberg has long been an icon. An icon with plaited pigtails and a simple sign, who, as a 15-year-old, held up a mirror to the adult world with her initially lonely “school strikes for the climate” in front of the Swedish Parliament. “Nobody is too small to make a difference,” she declared, inspiring millions of people to protest climate change. From the lectern at the UN climate summit in New York in 2019, she thundered at the powerful of the world: “You stole my childhood!”
When Thunberg first heard about global warming at the age of eight, her concerns ended in depression, she says. But instead of giving up, the young Swede starts to fight. The Fridays for Future climate movement emerged from her solo protest. The teenager manages what many climate researchers have previously failed to do: Thunberg shakes the world awake. She is no longer a child, but a sharp-witted and uncompromising young woman.
The activist describes the fact that she has Asperger’s, a form of autism, as an advantage: For her, there is only black and white, she knows no gray areas. What she does, she does whole. Saving a little bit of the world is just not possible. Thunberg lives vegan, renounces new clothes and air travel. Her compatriot Abba star Björn Ulvaeus once called her “a defiant and deeply thoughtful Pippi Longstocking”.
Lots of hostility online
Thunberg not only admires her consistent words and actions, but also a lot of hate, not least on the Internet. Thunberg is more concerned with the politicians’ reaction to their activism. She tells a Danish journalist that the powerful have often frightened her by refusing to visualize the climate crisis.
For several years now, the Swede has been trying to shift the focus away from her person and onto the cause she is fighting for. After the big hype in 2019, things have calmed down around her. In October 2022, with the support of leading experts from all over the world, Thunberg will publish a 500-page “Climate Book” – a kind of reference work on the climate crisis. “The world has a fever,” writes Thunberg in it.
Nothing is known about how the 20-year-old celebrates her birthday. But she hasn’t completely withdrawn from the public eye. At the end of December, she attracted attention with a Twitter skirmish with influencer Andrew Tate. Tate had boasted about his cars and wrote to Thunberg: “Please give me your email address so I can send you a complete list of my car collection and the enormous emissions.” The Swede countered: “Yes, please enlighten me, write to me at kleinpenisenergie@hastdunichtsbessereszutun.com.” Her tweet got 3.9 million likes.
