Greta Thunberg
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish activist best known for pressuring governments to address climate change and social issues. She gained global attention in 2018, at age 15, after starting a solo school strike outside the Swedish parliament, which inspired the worldwide Fridays for Future movement.
Following the growth of the school strike movement, Thunberg became an internationally known figure through speeches, protests, and participation in climate demonstrations in Europe and elsewhere. She has addressed political leaders and taken part in major climate-related events, and her activism has been widely covered by international media, drawing both support and criticism. She has also broadened her focus to include human rights and global justice, voicing support for Ukraine, Palestine, and Armenia. In 2025, Thunberg twice joined a humanitarian flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, which drew international attention and political controversy.
Thunberg has been credited with sparking the "Greta effect", influencing environmental awareness and youth engagement worldwide. Supporters credit her with increasing public attention to climate issues and youth activism, while critics have questioned her rhetoric, methods, and role in political debate. Thunberg has consistently stated that her actions are guided by published climate research and policy targets. She has received numerous honours, including inclusion in Time's 100 Most Influential People and being named Person of the Year in 2019.
Early life
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was born on 3January 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden, to opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg. Her paternal grandfather was actor and director Olof Thunberg. As explained by The Week, "with a thespian father" and singer mother, "it is perhaps unsurprising that has a slightly unusual name.... Thunberg shares her second name with the adventuring creation of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé." 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 depressed her, and as a result, at the age of 11, she largely stopped talking, severely restricted her eating, and lost in two months. Eventually, she was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and selective mutism. In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Thunberg described her selective mutism as meaning she "only speaks when necessary". She 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 did not like her missing school but added: " respect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest and be happy."
Thunberg's diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome was made public nationwide in Sweden by her mother in May2015, in order to help families in similar situations. While acknowledging that Asperger's "has limited before", Thunberg views her diagnosis positively and has described it as a "superpower". She was later described as not only the best-known climate change activist, but also the best-known autism rights activist. In 2021, Thunberg said that many people in the Fridays for Future movement are autistic, and very inclusive and welcoming. She thinks that the reason so many autistic people become 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 the best things that have resulted from her activism to be friendships 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 showed 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 abandon international ventures in her opera career. Interviewed in December 2019 by the BBC, her father said: "To be honest, didn't do it to save the climate. She did it to save her child, because she saw how much it meant to her, and then, when she did that, she saw how much grew from that, how much energy she got from it." Thunberg credits her parents' eventual response and lifestyle changes with giving her hope and belief that she could make a difference. Asked in September 2021 whether she felt guilty about ending her mother's international career, she was surprised by the question: "It was her choice. I didn't make her do anything. I just provided her with the information to base her decision on." The family's story is recounted in the 2018 book Scenes from the Heart, updated in 2020 as Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, with contributions from the girls, and the whole family credited as authors.
Activism
Strike at the Riksdag
In August2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches for which she has become an internationally recognized climate activist. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, she said she got the idea of a climate strike after school shootings in the United States in February2018 led several youths to refuse to return to school. These teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, went on to organize the March for Our Lives in support of greater gun control. In May2018, Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. In part, she wrote: "I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?"After the paper published her article, Thunberg was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland, a group interested in doing something about climate change. Thunberg attended a few of their meetings. At one of them, Thorén suggested that school children could strike for climate change. Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but "no one was really interested", so eventually she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.
On 20August 2018, Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided not to attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9September; her protest began after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden's hottest summer in at least 262years. 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 reading Skolstrejk för klimatet.
Thunberg said her teachers were divided about her missing class to make her point. She says: "As people, they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers, they say I should stop."
Social media activism
After Thunberg posted a photo of her first strike day on Instagram and Twitter, other social media accounts quickly took up her cause. High-profile youth activists amplified her Instagram post, and on the second day, other activists joined her. A representative of the Finnish bank Nordea quoted one of Thunberg's tweets to more than 200,000followers. Thunberg's social media profile attracted local reporters, whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.One Swedish climate-focused social media company was We Don't Have Time, founded by Ingmar Rentzhog. He said her strike began attracting public attention only after he turned up with a freelance photographer and posted Thunberg's photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account, and a video in English that he posted on the company's YouTube channel. Rentzhog subsequently asked Thunberg to become an unpaid youth advisor to WDHT. He then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, We Don't Have Time AB, of which he is the chief executive officer. Thunberg stated that she received no money from the company and terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realized they were making money from her name.
Throughout 2018, Thunberg's activism evolved from a solitary protest to taking part in demonstrations throughout Europe, making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilizing her followers on social media platforms. In December, after Sweden's 2018general election, Thunberg continued to school strikebut only on Fridays. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in her Friday school strikes. In December alone, more than 20,000students held strikes in at least 270cities.
Thunberg spoke out against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test 2020 and Joint Entrance Examination2020 entrance exams, which were conducted in India in September. She said it was unfair for students to have to appear for exams during a global pandemic. She also said that India's students had been deeply impacted by the floods that hit states such as Bihar and Assam, which caused mass destruction.
On 3February 2021, Thunberg tweeted her support of the ongoing 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest. Effigies of Thunberg were burned in Delhi by Hindutva nationalists who opposed the farmers' protests. Thunberg's tweet was criticized by the Bharatiya Janata Party–led Indian government, which said that it was an internal matter. In her initial tweet, Thunberg linked to a document that provided a campaigning toolkit for those who wanted to support the farmers' protest. It contained advice on hashtags and how to sign petitions, and it also included suggested actions beyond those directly linked to the farmers' protest. She soon deleted the tweet, saying the document was "outdated", and linked to a different one "to enable anyone unfamiliar with the ongoing farmers protests in India to better understand the situation and make decisions on how to support the farmers based on their own analysis". The Indian climate activist who edited the toolkit, Disha Ravi, was arrested under the charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy on 16 February 2021.