She’s 16. She’s Swedish. And she’s angry. Greta Thunberg has transformed that anger into action – climate action – and has dragged hundreds of thousands of teens, and maybe a few CEOs, into the battle.
When asked what she would do if she could become leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the UN body charged with guiding the world on climate change action – 16-year-old Greta Thunberg doesn’t hesitate.
“On day one, I would explain that a crisis is imminent and that we need to act accordingly. On day two, I’d declare an international state of emergency and establish a remaining global carbon budget based on climate justice, and calculating the numbers for rich countries would be my top priority,” the Swedish student details. “On the last day, I’d let everyone know that only democracy, together with science, and goodwill between nations, can save us, as they are the three cornerstones of society.”
At the start of 2019, Thunberg travelled 32 hours by train, over the hills and gullies of northern Europe, to appear at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She sat in a room wall-to-wall with some of the most powerful people on the planet and told them off. What makes a kid do that? Simple: climate change, and the world’s sluggish attempts to stop its destructive path.
"Only democracy, together with science, and goodwill between nations, can save us, as they are the three cornerstones of society.”
Thunberg is small for her age, and she looks so very young as she sits on the stage at Davos in purple pants, two long plaits draped over her shoulders. Sitting next to her is John Haley, CEO of Willis Towers Watson, the third largest insurance broker in the world, a company that employs around 43,000 people. But she doesn’t seem the slightest bit intimidated. She is firm and calm as she details the way the powerful decision-makers in the room have failed.
“At places like Davos people like to tell success stories, but their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag,” she announces, her impassive gaze travelling between the crowd in front of her and the piece of paper in her hands. “And on climate change we have to acknowledge that we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so.”
She finishes her speech with a bang: “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope, I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act, I want you to act as if you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire, because it is.”
In a matter of months, Thunberg has become the poster girl for climate action, the unofficial leader of (mostly young) people who are fed up with the global lack of action on climate change.
It all started in September 2018, when, for the three weeks leading up to Sweden’s parliamentary elections, she sat herself on the steps of the Parliament in Stockholm during school hours. Her complaint? The lack of discussion of climate in the election campaign.
“None of my peers were willing to go on a school strike with me, and my parents weren’t very fond of the idea either. So I decided I had to do this by myself – I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me not to do it, so I did it,” she says.
She was ignored at first, but then some reporters stopped by for a chat. Within hours the image of her – a little girl in a bright yellow raincoat, sitting out in the cold wet day, clutching a sign that says “School Strike for the Climate” in Swedish – went viral.
Since then, her one-girl protest burst onto the world stage. Not only has she been invited to speak at high-profile conferences, students around the world have been following her example and striking from school. The most momentous was in March 2019, when students in more than 2000 cities from 125 countries put down their books in the name of climate action. It was estimated to include more than one million young people, 150,000 of them in Australia. Soon after, Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
It’s not clear why this particular teenager has sent so many ripples out into the world. It’s not clear why, 40 years since the first World Climate Conference, the message is now having cut-through. But Thunberg joins a growing league of precocious young people putting their foot down. Thunberg says the Parkland High School anti-gun protestors in the US were an inspiration to her and, similarly, she is not afraid to tell world leaders exactly what she thinks.
Speaking at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Katowice, Poland in December, she said: “Are you scared of being unpopular? I don’t care about being popular, I care about climate justice and the living planet. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.”
In February 2019, when the office of UK Prime Minister Theresa May said the school strike for climate “wastes lesson time”, Greta quickly retorted on Twitter: “But then again, political leaders have wasted 30 yrs of inaction. And that is slightly worse.”
Speaking to the UK Houses of Parliament in April she said: “Did you hear what I just said? Is my English okay? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder. During the last six months I have travelled around Europe…repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no-one seems to be talking about it, and nothing has changed. In fact, the emissions are still rising.” A week later, lawmakers in the UK became the first in the world to declare a “climate emergency”.
Greta is very open about who she is, including being on the autism spectrum – she calls herself a “climate activist with Asperger” on her Twitter bio. This might be, in part, because she believes living with Asperger’s is one of the reasons she has been so successful.
“I don’t think [the campaign] would’ve been possible without it,” she says. “I work and think a bit differently – whilst it was easy for everyone else to forget about this awful picture of a starving polar bear that was shown to us in class, I wouldn’t have been able to look myself in the mirror if I just let it go.”
Her family, although reluctant to allow her to miss school, are backing her efforts. Her mother, world-famous opera singer Malena Ernman, announced she would no longer take international gigs if she had to fly to them. And, every Friday, Thunberg is back in position on the Stockholm parliament steps.
“I will strike every Friday until Sweden is in line with the Paris Agreement, and I hope kids from other countries will do the same,” she says.
Thunberg’s actions tend to polarise. Some critics have labelled her “weird”, or dismiss her as naive. Some fixate on a random photo of her holding a sandwich wrapped in plastic, clamouring about “hypocrisy”. Some theorise that she is just a puppet for shadowy figures on the far left, acting for somebody else’s agenda. Some agree with her concerns, but don’t think she should be skipping school. Some, however, are inspired.
"We can’t vote, we don’t really have a say in many things, so we just have to protest like this.”
Seventeen-year-old Doha Khan, the lead organiser of School Strike 4 Climate in Adelaide, has been watching Thunberg’s protests closely.
“We take a lot of leadership and inspiration from her,” the Year 12 student says. “I think it’s because her protest is just so simple. It really highlighted the situation and the dilemma that young people face. We can’t vote, we don’t really have a say in many things, so we just have to protest like this.”
Khan got involved last year, and organised the March strike in her city that saw about 6000 young people take to the streets to demand climate action.
Billie Tristram, a 13-year-old Townsville student, joined a small local collective at the end of last year, and now is one of the key organisers in her city, who likewise pulled together a rally in March.
“It was amazing. Just being there and the people that surround you are all supporting you, adults, students, little kids, future generations...” Tristram says it was a relief that there were people who agreed with and supported her.
“When you look at our own Prime Minister, he had a few things to say at the time, and Townsville is a mining town, so there are a lot of strong opinions. But you’re never going to be able to please everyone, so that’s what I just focused on.”
Tristram has since organised regular rallies, protests outside politicians’ offices and written articles for the local paper. She says that Thunberg sparked something in her.
“Her speech brought me to tears, it was just incredible. She just told us that kids may be small, but our voices are loud. She really told the world that.”
Like Thunberg, Khan and a group of her schoolmates now also strike every Friday, sitting outside Adelaide Parliament. The Australian strike campaign has three demands: Stop the Adani coal mine; no new coal, oil or gas projects; 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
Khan is as steadfast as Thunberg: “We are facing a crisis. Quite literally our right to inherit a liveable climate is being pissed away by these pathetic climate policies that are being put forward,” she says. She practically scoffs at the suggestion that it’s not acceptable to take time away from her schooling.
“At the end of the day, we go to school so we have a good future, but the inaction of our government on climate change is the biggest threat to our future.”
In Sweden, it’s coming into summer, so Greta Thunberg will likely be discarding her yellow raincoat, the steps of parliament a little more hospitable to her weekly strike. Last summer was Sweden’s hottest on record, part of what initially spurred Thunberg’s outrage.
And the 16-year-old activist remains unequivocal in her message to leaders around the world: “If they don’t take responsibility for their actions, they’ll be remembered as some of the worst villains in human history.”
by Katherine Smyrk (@KSmyrk), with additional reporting by Veronica Lin
The article was first published in The Big Issue Australia
Comments