One day last summer, aged 15, she skipped school, sat down outside the Swedish parliament – and inadvertently kicked off a global movement.
“It’s amazing,” she says. “It’s more than 71 countries and more than 700 places, and counting. It’s increasing very much now, and that’s very, very fun.”
A year ago, this was unimaginable. Back then, Thunberg was a painfully introverted, slightly built nobody, waking at 6am to prepare for school and heading back home at 3pm. “Nothing really was happening in my life,” she recalls. “I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything. I thought I couldn’t make a difference because I was too small.”
She was never quite like the other kids. Her mother, Malena Ernman, is one of Sweden’s most celebrated opera singers. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and author (named after Svante Arrhenius, the Nobel prize-winning scientist who in 1896 first calculated how carbon dioxide emissions could lead to the greenhouse effect). Greta was exceptionally bright. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s.
“I overthink. Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.
I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on.
I cried through all the movies.
My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that.
Those pictures were stuck in my head.”
At about the age of eight, when she first learned about climate change, she was shocked that adults did not appear to be taking the issue seriously.
It was not the only reason she became depressed a few years later, but it was a significant factor.
Many politicians laud her candidness.
In return, she listens to their claims that stronger climate policies are unrealistic unless the public make the issue more of a priority.
She is unconvinced. “They are still not doing anything. So I don’t know really why they are supporting us because we are criticising them. It’s kind of weird.” She has also been withering about leaders in the US, UK and Australia who either ignore the strikers or admonish them for skipping classes. “They are desperately trying to change the subject whenever the school strikes come up. They know they can’t win this fight because they haven’t done anything.”
jpratt27 
She’s an example that needs to be followed by all. Not later, but now.
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