In August 2018, a fifteen-year-old girl bicycled to the Swedish Parliament and stood up holding a banner saying in Swedish: “School Strike For The Climate”.
Her name, Gretha Thunberg. A surprising movement was born while Gretha began to get media attention around the world as a global warming activist, giving speeches in front of the masses talking about climate change.
We’re going to explain how Thunberg decided to begin this campaign and how, thanks in part of her personality, it has become a worldwide movement named after the phrase on her banner, making Gretha one of the most relevant teenagers of the world in 2018, as Time magazine reports.
All of this began when she was eight, watching a documentary about ocean pollution at school. She was so impressed that began researching global warming, worrying to the point of falling into to a depression.
Maybe you can think that she went too far with her reaction, but it was mostly in part of her Asperger Syndrome.
Let me explain quickly, Asperger Syndrome is a developmental disorder part of the autism spectrum, characterized by affecting social interaction and nonverbal communication, all this without affecting the language skills or intellectual capabilities. For example, for a person with Asperger is hard to recognize sarcasm or irony.
Also, the interests of a person with Asperger are strongly focused on a specific topic, which is different in each diagnosis.
For someone with Asperger, that topic can be elephants or the elements on Saturn for example, but in the case of Gretha, it’s Global Warming. Thunberg once said that probably without her syndrome, she would not have started this movement.
She recovered from that depression thanks to the care of her parents and decided to take some action. Her first step was to stop going to school until the upcoming elections and began to protest in front of the Parliament, demanding action against the recent hot waves in the country, and demanding control in the carbon emissions in accordance to the Paris Agreement.
After the election, she continued striking on Fridays with other students who occasionally join to her. Gretha also convinced her family to become vegan and give up flying, lowing their carbon footprint.
At this point, she began to gain worldwide attention, newspapers around the world have been talking about her, even calling her as a modern version of Joan Of Arc, for her youth and leadership.
She was invited to give a speech on the English language in the People’s Climate March held in Sweden in October 2018, their family didn’t think she could make it due to her Selective Mutism Syndrome, which comes with her Asperger, but she said that her mutism had shown her when is needed to talk, and that march was one of those moments.
Then she traveled to Brussels to participate in the Rise for the Climate activity outside the European Parliament, also visited London to be part of the Declaration of Rebellion, organized by the eco-socio-political movement “Extinction Rebellion.”
Her activism has grown to the point that she has given very high profile public speeches around the world. Her style was straight, without focusing on attacking people at the events. For example, in January 2019 she addressed the World Economic Forum told the panel “Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.” She arrived at Davos after a 32-hour train trip, when some politicians arrived there using their private jets.
She has been part of the COP24 United Nations summit about Climate Change in Poland, where she participated in a panel talk with the UN General Secretary: Antonio Guterres.
Also spoke at 2018 version of TEDxStockholm, where she explained why she refuses to become a climate scientist, speculating on how future generations will be asking us why we didn’t do anything about this in 2018 when there was time.
Last February, she demanded to the European Commission chief to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 80% for 2030 on a speech given in Brussels.
And April 2019, thousands of people gathered in the Marble Arch in London, to listen to a Greta in an emotional speech during another “Extinction Rebellion” activity, after she visited Rome to meet Pope Francis, where she acknowledged him for standing up for climate, at the time that Pope Francis encouraged her to keep fighting her fight.
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