Who is Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate change activist?

[alexander koryagin]

Hi, all!

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Who is Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate change activist?

One day in late August 2018, Greta Thunberg took up position outside
Sweden's Parliament for the first time. She held a simple sign, black
letters on a white board, that said "School Strike for Climate."

"It felt like I was the only one who cared about the climate and the
ecological crisis," she told the BBC. The 15-year-old was by herself,
but not for long.

Within a year, her school strike, carried on through all weather, had
inspired millions of young people around the world to take to the
streets and demand action on climate change.

As thousands of students again protest in major global cities, here's a
look at what we know about the teenager who started it all.


Where did she grow up?

Ms Thunberg, the elder of two girls, was born on 3 January, 2003. She
grew up in Stockholm with her mother Malena Ernman, an opera singer and
former Eurovision Song Contest participant, and her actor father Svante
Thunberg. Her father is a descendant of Svante Arrhenius, a scientist
who came up with a model of the greenhouse effect. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1903.

Ms Thunberg said her parents were "as far from climate activists as
possible" before she made them aware of the issue. She persuaded her
parents to become vegan, and in 2016 convinced her mother to stop
flying, despite her mother frequently travelling overseas for work.

They have co-written a book with their daughter called Our House is on
Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis. It is set to be
released in March.

Ms Thunberg has Asperger's Syndrome, a developmental disorder, and has
described it as a gift and a superpower.

She says she first learned about climate change when she was eight and
couldn't understand why people weren't taking action.

"I remember thinking it was very strange that we were capable of
changing the entire face of the Earth and the precious thin layer of
atmosphere that makes it our home. Because if we were capable of doing
this, then why weren't we hearing about it everywhere?" she wrote in the
Guardian.

In May 2018, Ms Thunberg won a climate change essay competition in a
local newspaper. Three months later, she decided to start protesting in
front of the Swedish parliament building, vowing to continue until the
government met the carbon emissions target set out by world leaders in
Paris in 2015.

Ms Thunberg said her parents weren't enthusiastic about her protest at
the start, and told her that she would have to do it without their help.


How did her protests grow into a global movement?

After she was pictured outside the Swedish parliament building with her
sign, the teenager's protests went viral on social media.

As support for her cause grew, other strikes started around the world,
and the message spread with the hashtag #FridaysForFuture. By December
2018, more than 20,000 students around the world had joined her in
countries including Australia, the UK, Belgium, the US and Japan.

Ms Thunberg travelled to some of the strikes in Europe, choosing to
travel by train to limit her impact on the environment.

In April, she made an appearance at the Extinction Rebellion protests in
London, telling the crowd: "For way too long, the politicians and the
people in power have gotten away with not doing anything. We will make
sure that politicians will not get away with it for any longer."

In September, Ms Thunberg travelled to New York address the UN Climate
Conference. She made her way there on a zero-emissions boat in a journey
that lasted two weeks.

The week of her arrival, millions of people around the world took part
in a climate strike, underlining the scale of her influence.

During her address at the UN, she blasted politicians for relying on
young people for answers to climate change.

"How dare you," she said. "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. We
will be watching you."

At the end of 2019, she was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year.


What do her critics say?

Her message has not been well received by everyone, most notably
prominent conservative voices. But she has responded defiantly and often
with humour.

After her UN appearance, US President Donald Trump appeared to mock her
by saying she "seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a
bright and wonderful future".

Ms Thunberg then changed her Twitter biography to include Mr Trump's
words. She did the same weeks later when Russian President Vladimir
Putin called her a "kind but poorly informed teenager".

In January, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the teenager to go
away and study economics before lecturing investors. His comments came
after she called on world leaders to abandon fossil fuels at the World
Economic Forum in Davos.

As for the teenager's schooling, she took the whole of 2019 off school
to be able to attend the climate conference in New York and the world's
major annual climate summit in Madrid in December.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49918719
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Bye, all!
Alexander Koryagin