78 Facts About Greta Thunberg

1.

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.

2.

Greta Thunberg initially gained notice for her youth and her straightforward and blunt speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticizes world leaders for their failure to take what she considers sufficient action to address the climate crisis.

3.

Greta Thunberg speaks fluent English, and most of her public interactions are in English.

4.

Greta Thunberg's sudden rise to world fame made her both a leader in the activist community and a target for critics, especially due to her youth.

5.

Greta Thunberg received numerous honours and awards, including an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, inclusion in Time 100 most influential people, being the youngest Time Person of the Year, inclusion in the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women, and nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019,2020,2021 and 2022.

6.

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003, in Stockholm, Sweden, the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg.

7.

Greta Thunberg says she first heard about climate change in 2011, when she was eight years old, and could not understand why so little was being done about it.

8.

In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Greta Thunberg described the selective mutism aspect of her condition as meaning she "only speaks when necessary".

9.

Greta Thunberg struggled with depression for almost four years before she began her school strike campaign.

10.

Greta Thunberg was later described as being not only the best-known climate change activist, but the best-known autism activist.

11.

Greta Thunberg commented in 2021 that many people in the Fridays for Future movement had autism, and were very inclusive and welcoming.

12.

Greta Thunberg has said she tried showing them graphs and data, but when that did not work, she warned her family that they were stealing her future.

13.

Greta Thunberg did it to save her child because she saw how much it meant to her, and then, when she did that, she saw how much grew from that, how much energy she got from it.

14.

In May 2018, Greta Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

15.

Greta Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but "no one was really interested", so eventually she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.

16.

On 20 August 2018, Greta Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided not to attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September; her protest began after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden's hottest summer in at least 262 years.

17.

Greta Thunberg's demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and she protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign Skolstrejk for klimatet.

18.

Greta Thunberg said her teachers were divided in their views about her missing class to make her point.

19.

Greta Thunberg said her strike only began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and posted Thunberg's photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account, and a video in English that he posted on the company's YouTube channel.

20.

Rentzhog subsequently asked Greta Thunberg to become an unpaid youth advisor to WDHT.

21.

Greta Thunberg then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, We Don't Have Time AB, of which Rentzhog is the chief executive officer.

22.

Greta Thunberg received no money from the company and terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realized they were making money from her name.

23.

Greta Thunberg inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.

24.

Greta Thunberg said that it is unfair for students to appear for exams in the middle of a global pandemic.

25.

Greta Thunberg said that the students of India have been deeply impacted by the floods that hit states such as Bihar and Assam, which cause mass destruction for the citizens.

26.

Effigies of Greta Thunberg were burned in Delhi by nationalists who were against the farmer protests.

27.

Greta Thunberg's tweet received criticism from the BJP-led Indian government, which said that it was an internal matter.

28.

Greta Thunberg commented that the world leaders present were "not mature enough to tell it like it is".

29.

In July 2019, Time magazine reported Greta Thunberg was taking a "sabbatical year" from school, intending to travel in the Americas while meeting people from the climate movement.

30.

The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Greta Thunberg's declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions.

31.

On 23 September 2019, Greta Thunberg attended the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.

32.

That day the United Nations Children's Fund hosted a press conference where Greta Thunberg joined fifteen other children including Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villasenor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith and others.

33.

In Canada, Greta Thunberg participated in climate protests in the cities of Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver, including leading a climate rally as part of the 27 September 2019 Global Climate Strike in Montreal.

34.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in attendance, and Greta Thunberg spoke briefly with him.

35.

Greta Thunberg has refused to fly because of the carbon emissions from air travel, so she posted on social media that she needed a ride across the Atlantic Ocean.

36.

Greta Thunberg arrived in the Port of Lisbon on 3 December 2019, then travelled on to Madrid to speak at COP25 and to participate with the local Fridays for Future climate strikers.

37.

On 30 December 2019, Greta Thunberg was guest editor of the BBC Radio's flagship current affairs programme, the Today Programme.

38.

On 11 January 2020, Greta Thunberg called on German company Siemens to stop the delivery of railway equipment to the controversial Carmichael coal mine, operated by a subsidiary of Indian company Adani Group in Australia, but on 13 January, Siemens said that it would continue to honour its contract with Adani.

39.

On 21 January 2020, Greta Thunberg returned to the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, delivered two speeches, and participated in panel discussions hosted by The New York Times and the World Economic Forum.

40.

In February 2020, Greta Thunberg travelled to Oxford University to meet Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pakistani activist for female education who had been shot in the head by the Taliban as a schoolgirl.

41.

Greta Thunberg was later to join a school strike in Bristol.

42.

On 4 March 2020, Greta Thunberg attended an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament's Environment Committee to talk about the European Climate Law.

43.

On 24 August 2020, Greta Thunberg ended her "gap year" from school when she returned to the classroom.

44.

On 14 December 2020, Greta Thunberg used Twitter to criticize the New Zealand Labour Government's recent climate change emergency declaration as "virtue signalling", tweeting that New Zealand's Labour Government had only committed to reducing less than one percent of New Zealand's carbon emissions by 2025.

45.

On 29 December 2020, during a BBC interview, Greta Thunberg said that climate experts are not being listened to despite the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of using science to address such issues.

46.

Greta Thunberg added that the COVID-19 crisis had "shone a light" on how "we cannot make it without science".

47.

Greta Thunberg said that the way humans are destroying habitats are the perfect conditions for the spread of diseases and noted zoonotic illnesses such as COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, West Nile fever, SARS, MERS, among others.

48.

The inaugural edition of Vogue Scandinavia had a cover photograph of Greta Thunberg shot by Swedish photography and conservationist duo Iris and Mattias Alexandrov Klum and an interview with her.

49.

The cover shows Greta Thunberg wearing a trench coat while sitting with an Icelandic horse in a woodland outside Stockholm.

50.

On 28 September 2021, Greta Thunberg criticized US president Joe Biden, British prime minister Boris Johnson, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders over their promises to address the climate crisis in a speech at the Youth4Climate Summit in Milan.

51.

Greta Thunberg told the BBC journalist Andrew Marr that banks should "stop funding our destruction", ahead of the UN COP26 climate summit.

52.

At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Greta Thunberg attended a panel on climate change hosted by British actress Emma Watson.

53.

Greta Thunberg further lamented that activists and teenagers are needed in order to bring awareness about climate change.

54.

Greta Thunberg has condemned British mining firm Beowulf's project to mine iron on Sami land.

55.

Greta Thunberg contributed writings to the book and is credited as its author.

56.

Greta Thunberg donated her copyright and all royalties generated by the book to her foundation and will not personally profit from sales or other commercial uses.

57.

On 14 January 2023, Greta Thunberg spoke during a protest in Lutzerath, calling on the German authorities to stop the expansion of a nearby coal mine.

58.

Greta Thunberg was released the same day after an identity check.

59.

Greta Thunberg asserts that humanity is facing an existential crisis because of global warming and holds the baby boomers, and each subsequent generation, responsible for creating and perpetuating detrimental changes to the Earth's climate.

60.

Greta Thunberg uses graphic analogies to highlight her concerns and often speaks bluntly to business and political leaders about their failure to take concerted action.

61.

Greta Thunberg has said that climate change will have a disproportionate effect on young people, whose futures will be profoundly affected.

62.

Greta Thunberg has voiced support for other young activists from developing countries who are already facing the damaging effects of climate change.

63.

Greta Thunberg delivered a speech to protesters in which she described COP26 as a failure, speaking of "blah blah blah" and greenwashing.

64.

Greta Thunberg has received both strong support and strong criticism for her work from politicians and the press, reflecting the difficulties encountered by leading environmental and scientific voices to be heard in the corridors in power.

65.

Greta Thunberg has met with many politicians and world leaders, but said that she could not think of a single politician who has impressed her.

66.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated that young activists such as Greta Thunberg had driven her government to act faster on climate change.

67.

Tanja Bueltmann, founder of EU Citizens' Champion, said Banks had "invoked the drowning of a child" for his own amusement and said that most of those attacking Greta Thunberg "are white middle-aged men from the right of the political spectrum".

68.

Greta Thunberg has spearheaded the anti-flying movement, promoting rail travel over flying on environmental grounds.

69.

Greta Thunberg backed the campaign to fly less and made it part of her 2019 "awareness tour" in Europe.

70.

Greta Thunberg was featured on the Time magazine cover in May 2019 issue, where she was described as a role model and one of the "Next Generation Leaders".

71.

In 2019, Greta Thunberg contributed a voiceover for a release of "The 1975", a song by the English band by the same name.

72.

In 2019, Greta Thunberg collaborated with the climate charity Project Pressure on an art piece projected onto the UN building in New York in the lead up to the UN Climate Action Summit featuring the voices of six young activists, including Greta Thunberg herself.

73.

In May 2020, Greta Thunberg was featured in Pearl Jam's music video 'Retrograde'.

74.

Greta Thunberg appears as a fortune teller, with images in her crystal ball depicting startling effects of climate change in numerous countries.

75.

On 3 September 2020, the Hulu cinema verite-esque documentary I Am Greta Thunberg had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

76.

Greta Thunberg has received honours and awards over the course of her activism.

77.

Greta Thunberg has refused to attend ceremonies or accept prizes if it requires her to fly, such as for the International Children's Peace Prize.

78.

Greta Thunberg has received prizes from various NGOs but from scientific institutions that lauded her success in raising awareness.