Greta Thunberg

Katelin Corra

Greta Thunberg is 18-years-old and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden. Greta’s mother, Malena Ernman, is an opera singer and former Eurovision Song Contest participant.

Her father Svante Thunberg, is an actor, and is a descendant of Svante Arrhenius, a scientist who came up with a model of the greenhouse effect. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903.

The elder of two girls, she says she learned about climate change when she was eight, but that her parents were not climate activists.

Greta has Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disorder, and has described it as a gift and said being different is a “superpower”.

In May 2018, aged 15, Greta won a climate change essay competition in a local newspaper. Three months later, in August, she started protesting in front of the Swedish parliament building, vowing to continue until the Swedish government met the carbon emissions target agreed by world leaders in Paris, in 2015.

She held a sign that read “School Strike for Climate” and began regularly missing lessons to go on strike on Fridays, urging students around the world to join her. Her protests went viral on social media and as support for her cause grew, other strikes started around the world, spreading with the hashtag #FridaysForFuture.

By December 2018, more than 20,000 students around the world had joined her in countries including Australia, the UK, Belgium, the US and Japan. She joined strikes around Europe, choosing to travel by train to limit her impact on the environment.

Greta says big governments and businesses around the world are not moving quickly enough to cut carbon emissions and has attacked world leaders for failing young people. Initially, her protests focused on the Swedish government’s climate targets, and she urged students around the world to make similar demands in their own countries.

But as her fame has grown, she has called for governments around the world to do more to cut global emissions. She has spoken at international meetings, including the UN’s 2019 climate change gathering in New York, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. At the forum, she called for banks, firms and governments to stop investing and subsidising fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. “Instead, they should invest their money in existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature,” she said.

I truly admire how hard working this young woman is. She was very young when she started this important movement, and I love that so much. Not everyone has access to the same amount of financial benefits as she does, and i am very glad to see that she is using these benefits to go on with this social movement. Her dedication and resilience will forever be respected by so many. Greta took the whole of 2019 off school to continue campaigning, to attend key climate conferences, and to join student protests around the world.

Regardless of whichever camp you’re on, one thing is pretty clear: More and more people are finally talking about the environment. Thousands are beginning to see how their life choices affect the planet on a large scale. Greta’s rise has also led many younger generations to have their voices heard and to be included in debates concerning policies related to the planet and ultimately their lives.

And this is a good thing.