Greta Ernman Thunberg or Greta Thunberg who was born in Sweden on January 3rd, 2003 are great environmental campaigners and influencers. She is known for initiating school strikes for the climate movement formed in November 2018 and soaring globally after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December of the same year.
Thunberg at first, looked like a weak and lonely figure when she began a school climate strike outside the Swedish parliament building last August. Her parents tried to prevent it. Classmates refuse to join. Passersby express mercy when they see the unknown little child sitting on a large rock with hand-painted banners.
Now, the “skolstrejk för klimatet” banner (school strike for climate) has been translated into various languages. And, most of all, she was not alone in the movement anymore. The global climate strike was one of the biggest environmental protests in the world that have been followed by more than 71 countries in more than 700 places.
Greta Thunberg as An Activist
A year ago, this was unimaginable. At that time, Thunberg was an introvert, woke up at 6 am ready to go to school and go home at 3 pm. “Nothing really happened in my life,” she recalls. “I have always been a girl who said nothing. I thought I could not make a difference because I was too small.”
She was never like other children. Her mother, Malena Ernman, is one of the most famous opera singers in Sweden. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and writer. “I think too much. Some people can let everything go, but I can’t, especially if something makes me worry or sad. I remember when I was young, and at school, our teachers showed us a movie of plastic seas, starving polar bears and so on. I cried because of the film. My classmates were worried when they watched the film, but when the film stopped, they began to think of other things. I can not do that. The photos were stuck in my head. ”
Greta Thunberg and Climate Change
Around the age of eight, when she first learned about climate change, she was surprised that adults did not seem to take this problem seriously. “They just told me everything would be fine and after a while, they started listening to what I was really saying. That’s when I realized I could make a difference. ”
Her father even became a vegetarian because of her argument and was relieved by the transformation of their previously quiet and moody daughter. “For years, I have run out of arguments,” said her father. She continued to show us documentaries, and we read books together. Before that, I really didn’t know. I think we have solved the climate problem but she changed us and now she changes many others. ”
Climate strikes inspired by students from Parkland schools in Florida, who left the class in protest against US arms laws that allow massacres on their campuses. Last summer, after a record heat wave in northern Europe and a forest fire that destroyed much of Sweden’s land to the North Pole, Thunberg decided to do it herself. The first day is August 20, 2018.
She kept her promise to strike every day until Sweden’s national elections. After that, she agreed to address thousands of people at the March Climate rally. “I don’t want you to hope. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear that I feel every day then I want you to act,”. Greta Thunberg has inspired other young people to follow throughout the world.
