greta thunberg biography climate change

Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg is a Swedish climate youth activist who has received worldwide recognition for her efforts to fight climate change.

Who Is Greta Thunberg?

Greta Thunberg is a Swedish climate youth activist who sparked an international movement to fight climate change beginning in 2018. With the simple message "School strike for climate" handwritten on poster board, Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays and protesting outside the Swedish Parliament. Thanks to social media, her actions have spread and influenced millions of young people all over the world to organize and protest.

Launching "Fridays For Future," Thunberg and other concerned youths throughout Europe have continued to pressure leaders and lawmakers to act on climate change through their regular walkouts. Thunberg has also traveled the world, meeting with global leaders and speaking at assemblies to demand climate solutions and a recommitment to the Paris Agreement. Recently diagnosed with Asperger's, the activist has publicly shared her views on her disorder, referring to it as her "superpower."

Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in March 2019, and a few months later she became the youngest individual ever to be honored as Time 's Person of the Year.

Thunberg was born on January 3, 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden. Thunberg began her climate activism at age 15. Thunberg was born and raised in an artistic family. Her mother, Malena Ernman, is an opera singer, and her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor. She has a younger sister, Beata, who is a popular singer in Sweden. Like her sister, Beata has been open about her own challenges dealing with disorders like ADHD and OCD.

Climate Activism

Thunberg was only eight when she first learned about the climate crisis. Since then, she has made efforts to lower her carbon footprint by not flying and becoming vegan and has influenced her family to do the same.

"You are not mature enough to tell it like is," she said at the summit, addressing the Secretary-General. "Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet."

Cross-Atlantic Trip to the United States

Invited to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, which took place in September 2019, Thunberg traveled across the Atlantic on a zero-emissions yacht, accompanied by her father and a supporting crew. Taking a little over two weeks, the yacht arrived in New York City on August 28th, and from there, Thunberg visited with President Barack Obama and later spoke before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Select Committee in Washington D.C. on September 18th.

Known for her blunt speaking style, Thunberg barely spoke before the committees and instead pushed forward the latest UN report. "I don't want you to listen to me," she said. "I want you to listen to the scientists."

Historical Climate-Change Protest in NYC

Two days later on September 20th, Thunberg walked with millions of protesters in New York City to demand climate action at the New York City Global Climate Strike. The demonstration became the largest climate protest in history with a total of 4 million people marching all over the world. The next day, she spoke at the UN Youth Climate Summit.

United Nations Climate Action Summit, 'How Dare You' Speech

Although the world's eyes were already on the teen activist, her speech on September 21, 2019, at the United Nations Climate Action Summit brought headline news. Speaking before leaders, lawmakers and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Thunberg lambasted them with one of her most indignant speeches.

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing," she said. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

She added: "For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight... You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you."

Days later, Thunberg joined 15 other young climate activists to file an official complaint that five countries — Argentina, France, Germany, Brazil and Turkey — have not honored their Paris Agreement pledges and have therefore violated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child treaty.

President Trump's Response

Thunberg's "How Dare You" speech attracted so much attention that President Donald Trump , a vehement climate change denier, felt compelled to offer a mocking tweet: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!" he wrote.

In response, Thunberg changed her Twitter bio temporarily, using Trump's language against him. Her profile read: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

In December 2019, Thunberg was among the speakers at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid, Spain. She also attended another major climate demonstration in the city, telling her fellow protesters, "The hope is not within the walls of COP25; the hope is out here with you."

Nobel Peace Prize Nomination

In March 2019, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her climate activism. However, she lost the award to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

'Time' Person of the Year

On December 11, 2019, Thunberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year; a month shy of her 17th birthday, she became the youngest individual to earn the honor.

"Thunberg has become the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet," wrote the Time editor-in-chief. "This was the year the climate crisis went from behind the curtain to center stage, from ambient political noise to squarely on the world's agenda, and no one did more to make that happen than Thunberg.

Future Plans

Taking a year off of school to campaign for climate action, Thunberg plans to travel to Mexico, Canada and South America to meet with environmental activists and see firsthand the regions most affected by climate change.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 2003
• Birth date: January 3, 2003
• Birth City: Stockholm
• Birth Country: Sweden
• Best Known For: Greta Thunberg is a Swedish climate youth activist who has received worldwide recognition for her efforts to fight climate change.
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Greta Thunberg Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/greta-thunberg
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 10, 2021
• Original Published Date: November 4, 2019
• You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
• For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
• We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow.
• People are underestimating the force of angry kids. If they want us to stop being angry, then maybe they should stop making us angry.
• The planet is outside its comfort zone and we also need to be outside of our comfort zone to prevent the worst consequences from happening.
• My role is to be one of many, many activists who are pushing for climate action. I don’t see myself as a leader, or icon or the face of a movement.

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Greta Thunberg: How one teenager became the voice of the planet

When Greta Thunberg first downloaded Instagram in June 2018, the Swedish schoolgirl used the app to post pictures of herself posing with her rescue dog, Roxy. There was Roxy in the snow, Roxy at sunset, even Roxy at an open-air theatre. It was an ordinary 15-year-old girl’s Instagram in many ways, though there were hints – a photo of homegrown tomatoes, multiple shots of fields and lakes – that Thunberg was passionate about the natural world. Indeed, just a month before, she had won a climate change essay competition run by Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. “I want to feel safe,” she wrote. “How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?”

At the age of 12, Thunberg gave up meat and stopped taking flights, in order to lessen her impact on the climate. In her early teens she became depressed and spent time off school, partly because of her fears about global warming. Then, in the summer of 2018, she became distressed again when heatwaves and wildfires spread across Sweden.

On August 20, 2018, Thunberg posted a picture of herself sitting outside Sweden’s parliament building, the Riksdag. “We children don’t usually do what you grown-ups tell us to do. We do as you do. And since you don’t give a shit about my future. I don’t give a shit either,” she captioned an image of herself in leopard print trousers and a blue hoodie, sat on the ground in Stockholm, a stray cigarette butt resting on the cobbles at her feet. Two-thirds of the frame was filled by a handmade cardboard sign reading, "Skolstrejk för klimatet”.

Thunberg’s plan was to skip school until the Swedish general election on September 9, 2018, in protest against the government’s inaction on climate change. “I was going to sit there and gain media attention on the climate crisis so that people would start talking about it, but then afterwards I thought: why should I stop now?” she says. While Thunberg returned to school for four days of the week after the election, she continued to strike every Friday. And so, #FridaysForFuture was born.

When Thunberg, disturbed after Sweden’s warmest summer, began striking, she initially asked her ­classmates to join her protest. Her immediate peers refused. However, like any self-respecting member of Generation Z, Thunberg cross-posted her original strike photo on both Instagram and Twitter.

Almost instantly, other social media accounts amplified her cause. According to Thunberg, one of her earliest high-profile supporters was Ingmar Rentzhog, a Swedish entrepreneur and environmentalist who arrived at her strike after it was covered by local journalists. He posted pictures of Thunberg on Facebook and Twitter, allowing her cause to spread further. (Thunberg is reported to have cut ties with Rentzhog after allegedly using her name to crowdfund for his company.) Sasja Beslik, head of Group Sustainable Finance at the Finnish bank Nordea, quote-tweeted Thunberg’s post to more than 200,000 followers. Three days later, on August 23, Thunberg tweeted another picture, excitedly writing that “almost 35 people!” had joined her strike.

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“I heard of Greta’s school strike on the afternoon of the first day,” says Mayson Persson, a non-binary trans 15-year-old from Stockholm who goes by they/them pronouns. Persson is politically engaged as a member of RFSL Ungdom, a Swedish youth organisation for LBGTQ+ rights. They say, they saw Thunberg’s post on Instagram after it was amplified by high-profile youth activists.

“The next day, just after 8am, I was there at her side,” Persson says. “I have, for a few years, had an interest in the climate and have chosen to not travel by airplane or eat meat in order to lessen my impact on the climate. I joined Greta because youths are strong but we are even stronger together.” At lunchtime, a handful more people joined the strike.

“Social media can be very effective in creating movements,” says Thurnberg. “In the beginning, that is how I first got attention. That is when journalists started coming.” Thunberg quickly attracted local reporters, going on to earn international coverage in just over a week.

On October 8, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire statement: a failure to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, it said, was likely to result in fires, floods and famines. “We don’t fall over a cliff at 1.5°C or by the year 2030,” says Jim Skea, an IPCC co-chair. He explains that while the media ran headlines about 12 years to save the planet, the report itself said 1.5°C warming would be hit between 2030 and 2052. The IPCC found that at 1.5°C warming, crop yields and livestock would be affected by rising temperatures, leading to food insecurity and poverty. “The IPCC is not an advocacy organisation, so it doesn’t say yes or no to a particular level of warming,” Skea says. “We can identify the implications, but we don’t actually advocate for it.”

Regardless, immediate action was needed to prevent an irreversible climate catastrophe, but while the scientists couched their findings in “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”, one 16-year-old girl didn’t hold back. On October 20, Thunberg addressed 10,000 people gathered in Finland for a climate change prevention march in Helsinki organised by Greenpeace, WWF, and Helsinki University’s student union. On November 24, she gave a TEDxStockholm talk. By then, children in other countries had begun striking as well, using the #FridaysForFuture hashtag to spread their cause. On April 13, 2019, Thunberg posted a picture of Leah, a 14-year-old Ugandan student who skipped school and held up a sign demanding: “#ClimateAction Now!!!”.

In December 2018, Thunberg addressed the United Nations climate change summit, telling world leaders that they were “not mature enough to tell it like is”. This talk became her first real viral video – more than 9.8 million people watched her speech when it was uploaded on the Facebook page for Brut UK, “a video content publisher covering social justice”. On January 22, 2019, she told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos that they should be panicking. “Our house is on fire,” she said. “You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5°C of warming or we don’t. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t.”

On Friday, March 15, 2019, more than a million students took part in 2,000 protests in 125 countries, from Albania and Kyrgyzstan to Peru, Thailand and Zambia, in the first Global Climate Strike for Future. In seven months, Thunberg had become a social media celebrity with 1.1m Instagram followers and 400,000 Twitter followers – and the global figurehead for climate action.

On a crisp Friday morning in April 2019, Thunberg sits again outside the Riksdag, wrapped in a large, scuffed purple duffle coat, a cream woollen hat atop her now signature pigtails, and her hands – in mismatched black and grey gloves – resting on her lap. It is her 33rd week of striking. “It is hard to realise how fast it has all spread around to so many people,” she says. “I am so busy now I don’t really have time to sit down and think through what is actually happening.”

Social media was crucial for Greta’s journey because she is, she says, a natural introvert. “Without social media I don’t think it would have worked,” she says. “I just sat down on a school strike. Now I reach millions of people.” Although she has mobilised millions of children around the world, she rarely chats with the kids at her own school. “They do not talk to me that often but that is good because then I am in a free zone where I don’t have to deal with all the attention,” she says. A few years ago, she was diagnosed with selective mutism, an anxiety disorder characterised by an inability to speak in certain situations. “It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention,” she says, “but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.”

In person, Thunberg’s speaking style is identical to that she uses to address the world’s most powerful men: she is straightforward, unemotional, eloquent. She was diagnosed with Asperger’s four years ago, and regards her diagnosis as a “superpower” when it comes to speaking candidly about the climate. The only question that gives her pause – she thinks for five seconds before answering – is: “Do you ever feel like a celebrity?”

“I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that… I have not really done anything,” she says. Less than six minutes later, an elderly man in a black anorak kneels down next to Thunberg to say that he has stopped flying, clutching her hand in his. Moments afterwards, two middle-aged women shake her hand and ask for a selfie, a tall Indian man requests a hug (she stoically complies), and a tourist holds out his notebook for an autograph. She writes her name in small, neat, thick black letters at the top of the page and then draws a love heart. When asked if this happens often, she simply says: “Yes”.

Yet, while the tourist couples around Thunberg want selfies, the Swedish schoolchildren gathered nearby want change. Four small children, perhaps between eight and ten, approach Thunberg to chat about their concerns, one clutching four bright orange Post-its full of notes, another waving a poster that says: “Marine life in plastic is not fantastic”. A large group of primary school age later arrive at the strike to rapturous applause; on neon green poster paper one child has written: “Stop global warming” and glued on three memes. In one, a starving polar bear asks: “There’s no such thing as climate change? Oh, good.”

Malin, a 16-year-old from Stockholm sporting devil horns, a blue rain jacket and walking boots, has come to strike with her friend Astrid, 18, for the third Friday in a row. “Greta has been such a leader, and it feels safe to express what I want when someone goes before me,” she says. Nearby, Ester, also 16, is the only student from her school to strike. “I think a lot of it comes from a lack of information,” she says.

“At school we’re taught about climate change and they say ‘this might happen’. I think we need to start making it clear we need to act now. It’s not a hypothetical universe that this is happening to, it’s happening here, and it’s going to affect us, everyone.”

The youngest protester is a five-year-old boy in a raincoat and blue hat who has written a message on A4 paper in a handful of different coloured felt-tip pens. His mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, travelled four hours by train to see Thunberg, and translates his sign. “Don’t cut any trees down, just two a week.” Clutching a jar of honey made by her own bees that she intends to give to Thunberg, the mother calls the teenager “very inspiring”. The crowd in the square comes and goes, but it is clear Thunberg has galvanised people from five to 50

“What do we want?” the protesting children spontaneously begin to chant. “To save the climate.” When do they want it? “Now! Now! Now!”

Greta Thunberg is far from the only child activist calling attention to the climate crisis, nor is she by any means the first. Jamie Margolin is the 17-year-old founder of Zero Hour, a youth-led climate movement established in the US in 2017. Margolin says when she first became an activist at the age of 14 in her home town of Seattle, it was “really, really” difficult to get anyone to pay attention.

“Climate change was barely in the news ever and I felt so alone,” says Margolin, who was motivated to start her movement after smog from over 20 Canadian wildfires blew over to her home city of Seattle, giving her “two weeks of headaches”.

“I’ve had this overwhelming sense of dread ever since I was really little,” Margolin says over Skype from school, while her peers shout, chat and play in the background. Like Thunberg, she can speak at length about the climate – her passion not betrayed by any audible emotion, but by the depth of her knowledge. “Whenever I saw something about climate change on TV, I would just not look at it because it was so scary,” she goes on. “I remember going to the beach in Seattle and the sign said, ‘Don’t feed the seals, don’t feed the otters’. But I never saw any seals or otters.”

Margolin joined local environmental organisations and, alongside other youth activists, sued the state of Washington to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (The case was ultimately dismissed.) “Environmental activism wasn’t like some little extracurricular, it was a full-time job outside of school,” she says now. “With other youth in my state, I was doing the unglamorous, gruelling work of building a movement, and no one was listening.”

Zero Hour aims to “centre the voices of diverse youth in the conversation around climate justice”. Rebecca Raby, a professor of child studies at Canada's Brock University, researches youth activism, and says that minority voices often struggle to gain media attention. Margolin, who is Hispanic, readily acknowledges that she built her movement “on the shoulders” of those who came before her, including the indigenous youth activists who resisted the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016. She also acknowledges that Thunberg – who sent her a message on Twitter asking to work with Zero Hour in October 2018 – built upon her work.

“Right now there’s this international climate movement that people are seeing, but the community organising for this has been happening for centuries,” Margolin says. “Even if we don’t directly get the credit or funding or whatever, it’s still amazing to see this movement grow. To be one of the first dominoes to knock this whole thing down is really amazing.”

There are a handful of reasons why Thunberg became the figurehead who mobilised the world’s children. The media impact of the “12 years to save the planet” figure touted in the press just two months after she started striking was, says Skea, “unprecedented” for the IPCC. Thunberg arguably also had pre-existing social capital – her mother is opera singer Malena Ernman, and she retweeted Thunberg’s original strike photo to over 40,000 followers, writing that while she understood the environmental crisis, she encouraged her daughter to go to school. Thunberg’s parents have always been clear that her campaign was entirely her own initiative.

“I followed her mum so that’s where I saw Greta’s first tweet,” says 18-year-old Nora Axelsson Håkanson, who speaks on children’s rights for the Swedish Feminist Initiative party, and joined Thunberg on her second day of striking. “Many people stopped by to tell us that they’d seen the post on Twitter or Facebook and support us,” she says of the early strike. “It all exploded and went viral just over the night.”

Yet beyond Thunberg’s social capital, there are other cultural reasons why adults listened to the solitary schoolgirl. Raby says that while there are many historical examples of youth movements, young people are now mobilising in more significant numbers and across more widespread geographies. The academic says it’s not the case that children are becoming more engaged — the real change is that adults have started paying attention.

“Young people’s views have often been marginalised based on arguments that they don’t know what they are talking about. Recent issues that young people have mobilised about all directly link to their lives and experience,” Raby explains. She adds that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed in the 1990s by Canada, the UK, India and New Zealand among others, means there are more top-down youth initiatives than ever before.

In 2018, one movement in particular inspired children to mobilise in greater numbers than ever before. On Valentine’s Day, a gunman killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Student survivors immediately demanded stricter gun control throughout the US, holding their first rally just three days after the tragedy. Rapidly, a handful of students became household names – Emma González and David Hogg, among others, ultimately led more than 1.2m protesters on the March for Our Lives in Washington, on March 24, 2018. Thunberg cites these marchers as one of the original inspirations for her strike. Hogg and González are now social media celebrities, with a combined total of over 2.5m followers. As teens, they aptly used memes and hashtags to make their movement go viral.

“Social media has played a significant role in recent activism,” says Raby. “While in the past young people and other more marginalised groups had to rely on established news media to publicise their concerns and events, now young people can communicate with each other and with adults directly.”

When it comes to the environment, the children are (what’s left of) the future. Kehkashan Basu is the now 18-year-old founder of the Green Hope Foundation, a member of the World Future Council, and a former co-ordinator of the United Nations Environment Programme. “My first climate action was planting a tree on my eighth birthday, using my gift money. Since that day, I have organised over 15,000 tree plantings across multiple countries,” she says.

At the age of eight, Basu became an activist when she saw a picture on television of a dead bird with “its belly full of plastic”. “Numb” at the thought of the bird’s “agony”, she organised a “no plastic” campaign in her neighbourhood. At 12, she started the Green Hope Foundation in her home city of Dubai. “What began as a dream with a handful of friends back in 2012 is now a global social enterprise with over 1,000 members working at ground level in 12 countries,” she says. The young people in the foundation clean beaches, plant trees, conserve habitats, and give speeches and presentations about global warming.

Basu has since moved from Dubai to Canada, a country with its own famous young environmental activist. At a First Nations meeting in 2016, the then 12-year-old Autumn Peltier confronted Justin Trudeau about his pipeline projects. “I am very unhappy with the choices you’ve made,” she told the Canadian prime minister, referring in part to his approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which could see 980km of pipe pump oil through vulnerable habitats, risking spills in bodies of water such as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, on the British Columbia coast.

“I think when the message comes from youth it has a bigger impact, because we are the future generation, the future leaders,” Peltier, now 14, says. Peltier comes from Wiikwemkoong, a First Nation on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, and says her people have nicknamed her a “water warrior” because of her advocacy. In March 2018, she told the United Nations general assembly to “warrior up” and stop polluting the world’s water.

“People my age are starting to notice how adults are treating the planet,” she says. “There’s a lot of kids that are worrying about our planet and our future, and we’re all just standing up now.”

On April 21, 2019 – after two straight days of train travel – Greta Thunberg came to London. A long queue of people snaked down Euston Road the next day as children and adults alike waited to hear her speak at her first public event in England. Just over a week earlier, the Youth Strike for Climate UK brought traffic to a halt in London. Children waving meme-emblazoned placards chanted outside Downing Street: “Theresa May, hear us say, climate change is here to stay!”

Two days later, Thunberg addressed MPs in the UK parliament, a microphone clipped to her pink-and-black check shirt, her voice and her plaits as unwavering as ever. “I know many of you don’t want to listen to us – you say we are just children,” she said. Two months earlier, Theresa May scolded school strikers for wasting teachers’ time and urged them to return to class. “I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?” Earlier that day, Thunberg met leading Westminster politicians, including Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable and Caroline Lucas. A symbolic empty seat was left out for Theresa May. "It was incredibly inspiring to meet Greta and in particular to hear her speak the truth to politicians about the scale and urgency of the climate crisis," says Lucas. "Politicians who fail to respond will be judged by history far less kindly than those striking or taking to the streets over the climate emergency."

It is clear that children’s climate activism is already putting pressure on world leaders to change. In February 2019, striking students in Belgium forced an environment minister to resign after she claimed the protests were a “set up” by adults. In the same month, California senator Dianne Feinstein was criticised for her failure to engage with child activists who were rallying for the Green New Deal.

“When adults say we need to go back to school I feel like they don’t understand the message that we are trying to send,” says Anuna De Wever, the de facto leader of the school strike movement in Belgium. “It’s a message of urgency. Of the fact that we are facing an existential crisis. We literally won’t have a future if we don’t act now. We are the last generation to actually be able to save this world.”

Are there limitations to movements run on social media, where followers and subscribers click "Like" to soothe their own guilt? “It feels like if someone steps behind me then their conscience is clear,” says Thunberg. “If all the people who followed me on social media did something then the world would look very different.” What about limitations to movements run by kids?

“There’s this weird thing where people will pit you as an inspiration, but then they don’t actually do anything about it,” says Zero Hour’s Margolin. “World leaders will be like ‘Oh, you guys are going to change the world’. It’s like, actually, we’re just kids telling you to stop messing up.”

Thunberg readily concurs. “I have spoken to many politicians who ask me ‘What do you think about this?’, and it’s just insane,” she says. “We are not doing this because we have solutions and we want to be the ones in power, we are just messengers. We are just children and we cannot solve this. We cannot wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge because by then it will be too late.” In her speech to the UK parliament, she was not optimistic, noting that despite the strikers' accomplishments, the greenhouse-gas emission curve was still rising.

Yet despite the naysayers, many other politicians and powerful people already back the #FridaysForFuture strikers. Angela Merkel says she welcomes the protesters, while Norwegian Socialist Left MP Freddy André Øvstegård nominated Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. “We need to recognise this new movement and enhance the momentum for change,” he says now. “She deserves the prize.”

Scientists, too, back the youth activists – in March 2019, more than 12,000 of them signed a letter in support of the youth protests. “She and her colleagues have great moral authority – they’ll have to live with these changes all their lives,” says climate scholar Bill McKibben. “They can call on the rest of us to act, and they have. And I think many people will choose to answer.”

Whether that is true remains to be seen, but Thunberg is cautiously optimistic. When asked why so many people are blind to the realities of the climate crisis, her answer is simple. “I do not think they are evil,” she says. “I just think that they are not informed.”

Thunberg is part of a long history of child activists – in 1990, TIME ran an article about “ecokids”, a “new generation” of environmentally active schoolchildren. Thunberg is not naive about her place in this narrative, and understands newer and fresher faces may replace her as the media’s favourite young activist. “I am not going to be this interesting for long,” she says. “This attention is soon going to fade out, but I just hope that the attention sticks to the movement.”

Before Thunberg inspired one million school students to protest about climate inaction on March 15, 2019, she wanted to be an astronaut. Or an actor. Or a singer, scientist, farmer, policewoman, politician or doctor. “It is so hard to find something and decide what I want because I want to do so much,” she says. “But I realised that if you don’t care about the climate then the other things won’t matter in the future.”

Thunberg is neither hopeful nor pessimistic about the future of our planet – she is firmly grounded in the present, trying to change what she can now. “I have just decided that I will do this even if there is no hope. Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something,” she says. “Everyone says different things. Some say we are already screwed and some say we still have time.” Her message, as always, is calm and clear. “I just hope that this movement will continue and we do something about the climate – because that is the only thing that matters.”

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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• TED Speaker

Greta Thunberg

Why you should listen.

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament that has since spread all over the world and now involves over 100,000 schoolchildren. The movement is now called Fridays For Future. 

Thunberg has spoken at climate rallies in Stockholm, Helsinki, Brussels and London. In December 2018 she attended the United Nations COP24 in Katowice, Poland, where she addressed the Secretary-General and made a plenary speech that went viral and was shared many million times around the globe. In January 2019, she was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos where her speeches again made a worldwide impact.

Thunberg tries to live a low-carbon life. Therefore she is vegan, and she doesn't fly. In 2019, TIME magazine named her  Person of the Year  as well as one of the world's  100 most influential people . 

Greta Thunberg’s TED talk

The disarming case to act right now on climate change

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The TED community is brimming with new projects and ideas. Below, a few highlights. Youth climate change protests kick off across the world. Students from 112 countries skipped school in mid-March to join climate activist Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate demanding government action on climate change. The global event was part of the Fridays […]

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International Edition

• ENVIRONMENT

Greta Thunberg reflects on living through multiple crises in a 'post-truth society'

In an interview with National Geographic, the teen climate activist considers the successes of the youth climate movement and the challenges it will face.

This portrait is titled “Greta.”

Since her first sit-in outside the Swedish parliament building more than two years ago, Greta Thunberg’s fundamental message has been clear and unchanging: The climate crisis is humanity’s greatest existential threat and we need to treat it as such. That message inspired millions of young activists to protest for change and led to a series of viral speeches that have defined Thunberg’s global fame. She was Time ’s 2019 Person of the Year and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize two years in a row.

Now, though, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic—a global crisis of a much different nature—and the looming threat of the U.S. backing out of the Paris Agreement, the 17-year-old activist is back at school in Sweden. National Geographic spoke with Thunberg via Zoom about how her activism has changed over the past year, and how her message might survive an increasingly complex world. (This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity).

Oliver Whang : A lot has happened in the past half year or so. How has your work changed since the coronavirus hit?

Greta Thunberg : Well, we have moved from lots of physical things, meetings and strikes and so on, to doing it digitally. But, I mean, since we are a movement of people who don't fly because of the environmental impact, we haven't had to change that much in the way we work. And then every country, every local group, differs. Because we are a very decentralized movement. We are not run top-down, but every local group decides on their own what they're going to do. So it's been different from city to city, from country to country.

Oliver Whang : Have any of those countries or cities adapted in a way that's been really successful?

Greta Thunberg : Yeah. Some do weekly digital strikes, which have been successful. And many have done symbolic actions. Some have put up signs or shoes outside the parliament buildings to symbolize that we should be here, but we are home. So there are lots of creative ways people have adapted.

For Hungry Minds

Oliver Whang : Do you feel like the climate change crisis has been kind of forgotten in the middle of all this other stuff?

Greta Thunberg : Well, that's a very poignant narrative because, yes, of course, as have all other issues. In an emergency like this, you have to expect that other things are going to be put on hold, as they have been.

Oliver Whang : One thing that's been striking to me about the worldwide response to the coronavirus pandemic is that a lot of countries and companies have made really big moves. Stimulus bills were passed and companies are developing vaccines quickly. Do you see this kind of response as inspiring some kind of action towards addressing the climate crisis?

Greta Thunberg : Well, we shouldn't be comparing different crises, but it does show that we can treat a crisis like a crisis. And that it will probably change the way we perceive crises and crisis response. And it really proves that the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. It's just being treated as a public and important question, like a political topic. Which it is not, because it's an existential crisis.

Oliver Whang : But has the response to the coronavirus given you more hope? As in, we can have a similar response to the climate crisis?

Greta Thunberg : It confirmed what I already knew. That once we treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can change things and we can achieve things.

Oliver Whang : Here in the U.S., an election is coming up and our country is scheduled to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on November 4th. Our president has been promising to do this for years—he says that the accord is unfair to America. And there are a lot of people, not most of the people in the U.S., but a lot of them, who agree with the president and agree with that decision to withdraw from the accord. What would you say to those people?

Greta Thunberg : Nothing. Just as I always do, refer to the science. Because people have been trying to impact these people for so long, and they haven't succeeded. So why should I? Why should I be any different? If they don't listen to and understand and accept the science, then there's really nothing that I can do. There's something much deeper that needs to change them.

Oliver Whang : What might that deeper thing be?

Greta Thunberg : That we live in a post-truth society today, and that we don't care that we have lost empathy. We have stopped caring for each other in a way. We have stopped thinking long-term and sustainable. And that's something that goes much deeper than just climate crisis deniers.

Oliver Whang : So do you think in order to address the climate crisis, we might need like a cultural shift or a paradigm shift rather than just passing carbon taxes and legislation, influencing leaders and developing technology?

Greta Thunberg : Well if I say that, then people will take that quote out of context and say that I want a revolution or something. But I mean the climate crisis is not the only problem here. It is just a symptom of a larger crisis. Like the loss of biodiversity, acidification of the oceans, and loss of fertile soil, and so on. And these things will not just be solved by stopping our emissions of greenhouse gases. The earth is a very complex system. If you take one thing and put it out of balance then that will have an impact on things beyond our comprehension. And that goes for equality as well. Humans are part of nature, and if we are not doing well, then nature is not doing well, because we are nature.

There are no arguments left. There are no excuses left. Now, it's just, either you try to minimize the crisis or just completely deny it, or you try to distract. Greta Thunberg

Thunberg poses for a photo, “Standing For Us All.”

Oliver Whang : Does it bother you that you might be missing all these people who maybe accept that climate change is a thing and that it's a crisis, but prioritize joblessness or access to food or other domestic issues over the climate crisis? Do you feel like you're missing them?

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Greta Thunberg : No, it doesn't bother me. We have not been made aware of the climate crisis—the climate crisis has never been treated as a crisis, so how can we expect people to care about it? Since we are not aware of even the basic facts, how can we expect people to want climate action? And so that is something that needs to change. We need to understand that we are not fighting for separate causes. We are fighting for one and the same cause even though it might not seem like it. It's the fight for climate justice, social justice. Whatever is the issue, it’s the fight for justice.

Oliver Whang : Do you think that we've made any significant progress towards addressing the climate crisis since you started protesting more than two years ago?

Greta Thunberg : It depends on how you see it. In one way, yes. It feels like the debate has shifted and more and more people are starting to slowly understand the climate crisis more and prioritizing it. But on the other hand, it has still never once been treated as a crisis. And the emissions are still rising. So it depends on how you see it.

But I mean we can't expect that this one movement will change the world. If we think that is the case then we have not understood the climate crisis. People are like, ‘Has your movement failed since you have not accomplished your goals?’ But, I mean, what are our goals? We don't have any goals. Our goal is to do as much as we possibly can to be a small part of a very big shift. To be one of countless of activists who push in the same direction from different perspectives. And that is our goal. We can't expect one movement or one initiative, one solution, to change everything, or to put us in the right direction. Because the climate crisis is very complex. It's not just that simple.

Oliver Whang : Was there anything that you did or that other youth climate activists have done that you think has been particularly successful? Or any sort of manifestation of what you've done in policy or in the economy that you think is an example of your success?

Greta Thunberg : Yes, we have many. Especially local examples. But I think the biggest thing that we have accomplished is to put the focus on the science. We just say, ‘We don't want you to listen to us, we want you to listen to the science.’ This not a question about politics, this is not our opinion. We don't want the emissions to reduce, it's what the science says is needed if we are to stay in line with our commitments. We don't want things to be like this. But unfortunately, that's where we are. And we will continue to push for people to listen to the science.

Oliver Whang : Do you ever have any doubts about your work? Do you ever doubt yourself or what you've been doing?

Greta Thunberg : No, because I know it's the right thing to do. We are at a time now where we must step out of our comfort zones. I feel like I have a moral duty to do what I can, since I'm a citizen. And that makes me part of something and it is my duty, my moral duty, my moral responsibility, to do everything I can.

Oliver Whang : And that's never been in question for you?

Greta Thunberg : No. I mean, I don't want to be an activist. I don't think any climate activist does it because they want to. We do this just because no one else is doing anything, and because we need to do something. Someone needs to do something, and we are somebodies.

Oliver Whang : I'm curious if you feel like your moral duties or your responsibility has changed as you’ve become this more recognized name.

Greta Thunberg : Well, yes. Of course everyone has a responsibility, but the bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility. And the bigger your power, the bigger your responsibility. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. So of course, as I've gotten a bigger platform that also comes with a bigger responsibility. I must use these channels, or whatever you would call them, to educate, to spread awareness.

And the things, all the resources I have, they will disappear one day. I mean, I won't be this person for a long time. Soon people will lose interest in me and I won't be so-called “famous” anymore. And then I will have to do something else. So I'm trying to, as long as I have this platform, use it.

Oliver Whang : How do you see yourself proceeding from here? Do you want to go to university? Do you have any plans?

Greta Thunberg : Well, I don't really know. I just do what I want to do at the moment. And right now, I just started gymnasium ( Editor’s note: “gymnasium” is the Swedish equivalent of high school). And there I will be for the following three years. And unless I want to do something else, I mean, we will see. The world changes from day to day. So you just have to adapt, I guess.

Oliver Whang : How do you plan on sustaining this movement? Are there specific things we need to do that are different from what needed to be done two years ago or one year ago or eight months ago?

Greta Thunberg : I mean, it's very complex. But right now we have kind of hit the wall. There are no arguments left. There are no excuses left. Now, it's just, either you try to minimize the crisis or just completely deny it, or you try to distract. We just need to start treating the crisis like a crisis and continue to lift up the science, but now everyone's blaming each other and we are stuck in a loop. We won't get anywhere unless someone breaks that chain, so to speak. Someone needs to do something. I mean, of course, many people have to do lots of things, but unless someone with a big platform or big responsibility does something to start treating the crisis like a crisis—for instance, the media—then we won't be able to move from here.

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Greta Thunberg on the State of the Climate Movement

You called COP26 a “ failure ” and a “PR event.”

What do you mean when you say, “watering down the blah, blah, blah”, and what are positives that might have come out of cop26, i read recently that at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, we have 11 years until we get to 1.5 degrees celsius change [the paris agreement’s aspirational temperature threshold for heading off the worst impacts of climate change]. how do you get people to focus on that.

You’ve been very successful in getting energy and attention on this issue over the last few years. Can you talk about first becoming aware of the climate crisis yourself, and being galvanized to action?

Was there a moment you moved from personal actions to a bigger scale, and that’s when you were 15, right, but before that, when did the weight of the emergency hit you, you’ve quipped that if more people had autism or asperger’s maybe we would do better in focusing on the climate crisis and not continuing to justify the trade-offs in our own minds., do you think one of the reasons you were so effective right away was because it was a shock to hear this small, young girl speaking uncomfortable truth to adults who were supposedly the experts, there are clearly people interested in climate change who take a more diplomatic tack, aware that they have to compromise to get things done. do you ever worry that the “blah, blah, blah,” or more combative rhetoric, makes their job harder when they’re trying to do the right thing, just from a more temperate position, strategically, do you ever feel the need to change your tack these days, to say, “okay, this is what people might expect me to say now, and so here’s a new way to shock people out of their complacency”, are you inspired by any of the world leaders, by president biden.

You have become a hero to young people, yet you were bullied as a kid and socially isolated. It must be sort of complicated now that young people who previously didn’t support you or give you the time of day are putting you on a pedestal.

What can you tell other young people, both those experiencing bullying and maybe those doing the bullying, to help them move to a better place, do you draw a connection between empathy for each other on a small level and empathy as a global community with climate change and climate justice, as somebody who had been living in social isolation before speaking out, how did you handle both the positive adulation and the sometimes very personal negative criticism, even from world leaders, on twitter and other places, can you get to the place in your mind where you say, okay, it’s 30 years hence, and we were successful what does that look like and then what do you get to focus on in your life, what do you do when you need a break, so does the teacher just turn it over to you: “greta …”, after the experience of the last few years, its roller-coaster up and down, do you find yourself more or less hopeful than when you first sat out in front of the swedish parliament with your [“skolstrejk for klimatet”] sign, what can we learn from the pandemic about what can be accomplished when people do, in fact, treat a crisis like a crisis.

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Where Greta Thunberg does (and doesn't) expect to see action on climate change

Ailsa Chang

Christopher Intagliata

Greta Thunberg says the fight for social justice is the fight for climate justice. picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty I hide caption

Greta Thunberg says the fight for social justice is the fight for climate justice.

It all started with "skolstrejk för klimatet" – the "school strike for climate," also known as Fridays for Future. At 15 years old, Greta Thunberg began spending her Fridays striking in front of the Swedish Parliament to demand action against climate change.

In less than five years, millions have joined Fridays for Future. Thunberg spoke in front of the United Nations. She became Time magazine's youngest ever person of the year. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize four years in a row. By 20 years old, she has become a household name around the world... all while finishing high school.

Thunberg has just published The Climate Book . It's a collection of more than 100 essays from herself, scientists, historians, economists, and journalists diving into various topics sharing the data, realities, and proposed solutions to the ongoing climate crisis.

NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke to Thunberg about her new book, her future, and why she thinks change will come from outside the political world.

Police officers carry Thunberg out of a group of protesters and away from the edge of the Garzweiler II opencast lignite mine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty I hide caption

Police officers carry Thunberg out of a group of protesters and away from the edge of the Garzweiler II opencast lignite mine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

On why she put together this collection of essays

I think what mainly motivated me was that it was so difficult to find a source where you could actually read and go in depth on these issues. Because people often ask me, like, "Where can I read? What can I read? What can I watch? I want to get more engaged with the climate crisis. I want to become an activist. I want to learn. But I don't know where to start." So this is a very good place to start. I think it covers a lot of issues concerning the climate crisis. So it's not just a one-sided story.

On if the United States has stepped up in the way that it needs to

I wouldn't say in the way that it needs to. We might see some improvements in some areas, but still, the U.S. is expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. And to do that at a time right now where countless people are losing their lives and livelihoods in a climate emergency that is just continuing to escalate every day. I think that's very, very irresponsible and it's completely absurd.

On how to overcome the political realities of a divided government

That's exactly the reason why the politicians and the people in power need to start speaking up. Because as it is now, they might not have the votes, they might not have the public support from voters to actually take these measures. And of course, how can we expect that? How can we expect people to demand drastic change in order to safeguard our present and future living conditions if they don't know the reason why those changes are needed.

Right now it's like, saving the climate is seen as an act of tree hugging. It's not being seen as a way to protect our civilization as we know it and to save countless human lives. That is being put against jobs and workers, when it's actually the opposite.

Book Reviews

Greta thunberg's 'the climate book' urges world to keep climate justice out front.

The fight for social justice is the fight for climate justice. We can't have one without the other. We can't put them against each other. And unless people know that – unless people know how bad the situation actually is — they're not going to demand change because they're going to want to keep things the way they are.

I believe that the changes will come from the outside, people demanding this, because we see that when there have been successful campaigns. People are raising these issues in a way [that's] been working then that has also had effects on the policies that are being made and the decisions that are being made.

And then, of course, I think that I'm not the one to tell the U.S. how they should do things when it comes to things like Congress and so on. I think that's more up to the experts and the people there.

On whether she will pursue a career in politics

I really hope not. [laughs] I mean, politics as it is now is very, very toxic. And it doesn't seem like the kind of world I would want to spend my life in. I think that I can do more as a campaigner on the outside.

Thunberg at a Fridays for Future global climate strike in Berlin in 2021. Markus Schreiber/AP hide caption

Thunberg at a Fridays for Future global climate strike in Berlin in 2021.

On her experience as an international celebrity

Of course, I don't think it's what anyone expected or could ever expect. So I guess I just have to use the advantage that that gives me. It gives me a platform [where] I can speak up about things that can impact things, people, etc. But of course, it sends a weird message that we are focusing sometimes on specific individuals rather than the actual problem itself and rather than the people actually suffering the consequences of that problem.

On finishing high school and managing a busy schedule

I don't know, [laughs] to be honest. I don't have an answer to that.

On if it's overwhelming

Maybe yes, overwhelming. But I think what's more is the feeling of doing something that matters. Doing something that has an impact. Something that in the future, I will be able to look back at and say, "I did what I could during this existential crisis when most people were just either looking away or were too busy with their own lives."

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

Gretchen Frazee Gretchen Frazee

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/read-climate-activist-greta-thunbergs-speech-to-the-un

Read climate activist Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg chastised world leaders Monday for failing younger generations by not taking sufficient steps to stop climate change.

“You have stolen my childhood and my dreams with your empty words,” Thunberg said at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York.

Thunberg traveled to the U.S. by sailboat last month so she could appear at the summit. She and other youth activists led international climate strikes on Friday in an attempt to garner awareness ahead of the UN’s meeting of political and business leaders.

Read Greta Thunberg’s speech below:

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight? You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting up irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice.

They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50 percent risk is simply not acceptable to us. We who have to live with the consequences. To have a 67 percent chance of staying below the 1.5 degree of temperature rise, the best odds given by the IPCC, the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on January 1, 2018.

Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 that entire budget will be gone is less than 8 and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us, but young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this, right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not.

Gretchen Frazee is a Senior Coordinating Broadcast Producer for the PBS NewsHour.

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David Wallace-Wells

Greta thunberg: ‘the world is getting more grim by the day’.

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

There is genuinely no precedent in the modern history of geopolitics for the climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Four and a half years ago, she began “striking” outside of Swedish parliament — a single teenager with a single sign. She was 15. In just a few months, she had made her mark at the United Nations climate conference in Poland: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” she told the assembled diplomats and negotiators, “even that burden you leave to us children.”

By the time she spoke at Davos that January, excoriating the world — “I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is” — she had become the face of the global climate movement, giving it an entirely new generational life and scale. She led weekly marches across the globe that drew millions of people through 2019 and helped force the world’s most powerful people to at least pay lip service to what they now called a climate crisis.

I first met Thunberg in the middle of that maelstrom, when she came to New York in 2019 by boat to help stage two large climate strikes as bookends to the U.N.’s climate week. A lot has changed since then, and then again, a whole lot hasn’t. Thunberg is 20 now. Countries accounting for almost 90 percent of the world’s emissions and G.D.P. have made net-zero pledges. Renewable energy is skyrocketing, though fossil fuel use has only plateaued — perhaps even peaked — but it is a long way down from 40 gigatons (50 if you include methane) to zero. Current policies still point to a global average temperature rise above three degrees Celsius this century, more than double the more ambitious goals enshrined by the Paris agreement in 2015. And now Thunberg has published her third book, called “ The Climate Book ,” a curated tour of the state of the emergency and how to think about it from more than 100 contributors. (I wrote an essay for it drawing lessons from the experience of the pandemic.)

In early February I spoke with Thunberg, who was in Sweden, over Zoom, about why she believes it is now a trickier time to be a climate activist than when she began, why it’s no longer sufficient to listen to the scientists, the necessity of systems change and whether she still believes in the basic goodness of people. The conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and length.

We first met in 2019.

That was a time …

What’s changed, if anything, since then?

It seems like the world is getting more and more grim every day. The concentration of CO₂ is now higher in the atmosphere and causing more and more extreme weather.

But there are also positive things that have changed. We have more people now who are mobilized and who are in the climate movement, in the fight for the climate and social justice.

So I guess that’s a good thing. But we have to be able to zoom out and see that we are still moving in the wrong direction. The things that people said back then that they were going to do, they still haven’t done, which proves, or which shows us, that it was just empty promises and really not taking it seriously, unfortunately.

You say more people are mobilized. From where I sit, it felt like there was a rising tide of public protest and awareness in 2019 into early 2020. But the energy also feels a little dissipated, a little less front and center, after the pandemic.

Well, obviously, we had to stop doing everything that we did. That halted the momentum. And as you say, we know now that people are worried. It might not show on the streets because we still have to regain that momentum. But there is a more common sort of general level of concern among people. Of course, that doesn’t really mean anything unless that is translated to concrete action.

So what do people still need to understand, as you see it? What is the awareness gap now?

People often ask me why I am still so concerned, because things seem like we’re moving in the right direction. And then when I tell them the things that are happening, the things the governments are doing and the things that corporations are doing, people are shocked when they hear about those things — every single one. And so I think that if more people got to learn about and got to know about these things that are actually happening — where the world is actually heading — I think that there would be more outrage.

What things do you have in mind?

Just some of the simplest data. We can still see that the global emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing.

There have been some indications we may have reached peak fossil fuel use, but I think few people understand just how far a peak is away from zero. All it means is that we may have succeeded in not doing more damage to the future of the climate this year than we did last year. We’re still doing more than was ever done in a single year in the history of humanity at any point before, say, 2020.

Global temperature is still increasing. Governments and corporations are still financing and investing in fossil fuels. We are still expanding fossil fuel infrastructure all over the world. We are still expanding on Indigenous land, violating basic human rights.

Four or five years ago, you were really emphasizing that we need to listen to the scientists. Is that still sufficient?

No, of course not. In the beginning — well, “in the beginning” — people have been campaigning about this for decades. But when I began, I said we need to listen to the scientists because people were still treating the climate crisis as something debatable. And now — at least in the discourse — we’ve kind of settled that. It is a crisis. Even scientists and even heads of state are saying that this is an emergency.

Even C.E.O.s.

Yeah, exactly. They’re saying it. And they’re saying that they’re listening to the science. But they’re obviously not. So where do we go from there? We also have to listen to the people who are actually living in the climate crisis, living on the front lines. That’s something that’s become more and more relevant for me.

It’s been the same for me. When I first started worrying about these issues, I thought most reflexively in terms of our common shared fate as humanity, as a planet, and a lot less about the unequal distribution of responsibility and impacts.

Exactly. I was a nerd — I viewed the world in data and numbers, so that was my way of communicating. And of course, that’s not the ideal way of communicating facts like these.

Do you think that it was a mistake for people like us to focus on shared global fate rather than all the inequitable ways that climate impacts will be distributed? Do you think that was myopic?

Yeah, I would definitely have done it differently now. But back then I was very young and didn’t really know. I can’t really blame myself. But it has built a kind of narrative that it’s the children that are being impacted. And even though we said many times that it’s mostly people living in the Global South, the sort of message that got out was that the children are going to suffer from the climate crisis and now the children are rebelling.

If I let myself be somewhat optimistic about the course that the world is on, I imagine that we land somewhere between two and two and a half degrees Celsius of average warming. But that is a level that the nations of the Global North can endure, though they will be disrupted, and it is a level of warming that nations of the Global South will have a much harder time enduring.

I think that’s definitely true. And our ambitions and our actions would look completely different if the tables were turned — instead, the ones who are empowered, the ones who are making these decisions, are the ones who are going to be least hurt by it.

It’s interesting also to think about in terms of your own advocacy. In the first year or so, it seemed to me that there was almost an eagerness in the world’s wealthy nations to feel guilty. But the next stage is a lot harder: What are we going to do about it?

Yeah, definitely. I do think that we need to drastically wake people up for them to be able to change later. But also I think that there’s a misconception that, at least for my part, that I’m speaking directly to the world leaders to try to convince them.

Of course, I don’t go to United Nations conferences or whatever to try to persuade the rulers of the world, the rich people in the world, to somehow change their mind. I don’t think that they would listen to a Swedish schoolgirl. What I’m trying to do is by speaking to them to reach the public. Because I don’t think that the changes we need now are going to come from the people in power. I think that they’re going to come from outside when enough people are demanding change.

I assume you don’t believe those changes are afoot.

We’ve gone through a period of awakening, of climate alarm, and the era of climate denial is effectively over. And it seems like we’ve entered a new phase, dominated by normalization, where even people who know about what’s coming have baked it into their expectations of the future, and by false hope, as you’ve often talked about. How do we get past that?

I mean, we don’t know. Because we’ve never faced anything like this before. All we can do is try to navigate within this very new landscape of existential crisis that we are very, very rapidly approaching and many of us are already living in. So we are trying difficult methods to try to avoid getting stuck in those traps, like false hope. But how we’re going to do that — I don’t think anyone knows. If anyone did, then everything would be much simpler.

In a lot of ways it does seem to be a more complicated moment to be a climate activist than when you began. In the United States, we had the I.R.A., which is insufficient but is a major step forward. In Britain, we have Extinction Rebellion taking a turn toward mass mobilization and away from alarmist disruption. We have all that new awareness, a lot of new renewable power, and a whole lot of new renewable investment.

But it sounds like what you’re saying is that we actually still need the tools that were so vital four or five years ago to force people to look starkly at the state of the story, to wake up even those who may think they are already awake.

More or less, yes. But of course, it depends on who you are. For me, living in my bubble of activists, it may seem like people know where we’re heading, people know what’s happening, people care. But when I move outside that bubble into the real world, then it strikes me every time that people are really living in denial. There’s still no sense of urgency whatsoever, anywhere.

When we spoke about some of these issues a few years ago, you said that one of the reasons that you felt that awareness had to be so central to any advocacy was that you didn’t think — or maybe couldn’t think — that people were evil. And because of that, you said, you believed that if they knew of course they would act. Now we have a lot more knowledge but perhaps only a little more action.

I still think that we have to hope for the best in people. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from being an activist these last five years now, it’s that many, many people want to do good. Most people want to do good. But in “our society” or whatever — Our Society™ — people don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how to do good because we are raised with a sense of needing to make a career, needing to achieve this and that. And under those circumstances, of course, people are going to fight for themselves, they’re not going to strive for the common good, especially not for people living on the other side of the world, unfortunately.

In the book, you wrote: “We still need to answer some fundamental questions. What is it exactly we want to solve in the first place? What is our goal?” How would you answer those questions now?

Right now it seems like the people in power just don’t want to solve the climate crisis. They want to find “solutions,” whether they’re good or not, that enable us to continue now as we have been, that allow them to continue staying in power and to satisfy their greed. That’s not what I think that we should be striving for. I think that we need to make sure that no one’s well-being is at the expense of someone else. But that’s not what our current people in power seem to want.

Can we limit damages without changing that fundamental dynamic of exploitation, which predates the climate crisis?

I don’t think we can.

David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells), a writer for Opinion and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Uninhabitable Earth.”

• Environment

‘You Have Stolen My Dreams and My Childhood’: Greta Thunberg Gives Powerful Speech at UN Climate Summit

I n an emotional speech at the United Nations during the Climate Action Summit on Monday, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg appealed to world leaders about the grave need to stop the effects of climate change.

“You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” she said. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.”

Thunberg grew tearful, as she continued to condemn what she sees as the lack of action on part of leaders around the world to halt climate change. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”

The 2019 Climate Action Summit kicked off at the UN on Monday, where world leaders gathered to discuss serious strategies to mitigate climate change. Representatives of participating nations were told by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to come up with “concrete, realistic plans” to further their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and get to net zero emissions by 2050.

Thunberg cited more than 30 years of scientific evidence showing the consequences of a perpetually warming globe and delivered searing criticism of politicians who were aware of the science, but still did nothing.

“You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that,” she said. “Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe.”

Thunberg spoke at the UN following her appearance at the Global Climate Strike in New York City on Friday where she addressed the crowd of protestors , saying, “Our house is on fire. We will do everything in our power to stop this crisis from getting worse.”

Speaking to the world leaders at the climate summit Monday, Thunberg echoed her earlier message and offered a warning. “You are failing us. But young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you, and if you choose to fail us, I say, we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this.”

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Write to Mahita Gajanan at [email protected]

Greta Thunberg Arrested At Eurovision Finals Where Israel’s Eden Golan Competes

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Israeli singer Eden Golan advanced to the final round of the Eurovision song competition and will sing later Saturday, as thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators continue to protest in the event’s host city of Malmo, Sweden, calling for Israel’s exclusion from the competition over the Israel-Hamas war.

Eden Golan of Israel, centre, celebrates gaining a place in the final during the second semi-final ... [+] at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Protesters, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg , have been gathering in Malmo for days with large crowds gathering Saturday ahead of the finals amid as calls for Israel’s expulsion—and Thunberg was arrested by Swedish police amid a standoff with officers Saturday afternoon, the BBC reported.

Boycotts of the competition began before it even started.

Israeli singer Eden Golan has been thrust into the center of the international controversy surrounding Israel’s war in Gaza, receiving heavy security and reportedly ordered by security to stay in her hotel room when not performing due to safety concerns.

The 20-year-old Golan has been repeatedly booed on stage during dress rehearsals and formal performances , but still earned enough votes after her Thursday semi-final performance to advance into Saturday’s finals.

Dutch performer Joost Klein was expelled Saturday morning after Swedish police investigated a “complaint made by a female member of the production crew,” and while no charges have been filed, “it would not be appropriate for him to continue in the contest,” according to Eurovision organizer the European Broadcasting Union .

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What Time Is The Eurovision Finals—and Where Is It Streaming?

In the U.S., the Eurovision finals start at 3 p.m. EDT. It’ll stream live on Peacock, and in some areas it will be livestreamed on the Eurovision YouTube channel. A full list of broadcasters for every participating country can be found here.

Section Title

When news broke that Klein’s participation in the contest was under review, it prompted false speculation it may have been somehow related to Golan. Tensions flared at a press conference earlier this week when Golan was asked if she believed her presence at the event posed a safety threat to the other contestants and was told by a moderator she didn’t have to answer the question, prompting Klein to shout, “Why not?” But the EBU said in its statement about Klein’s exit: “contrary to some media reports and social media speculation, this incident did not involve any other performer or delegation member.”

20,000. That’s how many protesters Swedish police were expecting in Malmo on Saturday, according to the Times of Israel.

What To Watch For

Croatia is the betting favorite to win the competition, though Israel has risen up the ranks to No. 2, according to Eurovision World , a website that tracks the competition's betting odds.

Key Background

Pro-Palestinian protesters have been calling for Israel to be excluded from the competition and other boycotts as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has raged on. In March, after several groups of musicians pressured contestants to boycott the competition, and nine Eurovision artists released a joint statement calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, but stopped short of pulling out of competing. The European Broadcasting Union has resisted calls to exclude Israel from the event, but did ask Golan to change the lyrics to her original entry song, “Hurricane,” which was inspired by the events of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The song was originally titled “October Rain” and included more specific allusions to the attack, but the contest said it required all songs to be non-political.

Crucial Quote

“Be blessed, and know that when they boo you, we are cheering you on,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video statement to Golan on X earlier this week.

Chief Critic

Climate activist Greta Thunberg accused Israel of “artwashing” its actions in Gaza, alleging the country is using the competition to distract from an alleged “genocide” of Palestinian people.

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Greta Thunberg removed from pro-Palestine protests by Swedish police outside Eurovision arena

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Climate activist Geta Thunberg has been removed by Swedish police outside the Malmö arena where the Eurovision final is taking place.

Thunberg, 21, had joined the Stop Israel march in Malmö where thousands continue to protest Israel’s inclusion in the competition over accusations the Israeli military was committing genocide in Gaza – something it strongly denies.

The activist was later pictured wearing a Keffiyeh scarf while being escorted away from the protest in moments before Saturday night’s final kicked off.

Follow The Independent ’s live coverage of the competition here.

Some protesters were reported to be chanting “Shame on you” at attendees arriving at the arena, as they continue to boycott this year’s competition for its inclusion of Israel.

Israeli act Eden Golan’s song “Hurricane” was reworked from a previous track called “October Rain”, which was thought to be a reference to the Hamas attacks on Israel. Golan is taking part in the final after being successful at the semi-finals.

It comes as Thunberg accused Israel of “artwashing” its reputation at the Eurovision Song Contest .

Thunberg said: “People from all over Sweden are gathering in Malmo this week, where Eurovision is taking place, to protest against Israel’s participation in the competition.

“Yesterday we were tens of thousands people flooding the streets of Malmo. We will not accept that a country currently committing genocide is allowed a platform to artwash themselves.

“The world cannot remain silent in a genocide. Everyone who can must use their voice and speak up against Israel’s crimes and occupation.”

The organisers behind Eurovision, the European Broadcasting Union, have repeatedly rejected calls to ban Israel from the contest amid its ongoing war on Gaza, where the death toll is believed to have reached as high as 35,000.

Swedish police have estimated between 10,000 to 12,000 people have taken part in the protest march against Israel’s participation in the competition.

Eurovision’s announced ahead of the competition that they reserve the right to remove any Palestinian flags and pro-Palestine symbols at the show, as protests mount against Israel’s participation in the competition amid its war in Gaza.

Last December , organisers of the event rejected calls for a boycott as they said it remains a “non-political event”.

​Organisers at Eurovision recently doubled down on their stance, saying that to exclude Israeli broadcaster Kan from the competition would have been a “political decision”.

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Greta Thunberg fined for blocking Swedish parliament entrance

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Reporting by Anna Ringstrom and Louise Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Gareth Jones

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