Greta Thunberg

“The adults have failed us,” Thunberg wrote in the Guardian in November 2018, appealing for other students to join her protest against climate inaction. “And since most of them, including the press and the politicians, keep ignoring the situation, we must take action into our own hands, starting today.” In the months that followed, Thunberg galvanized an unprecedented surge of climate demonstrations by millions of like-minded young people around the world who amplified her public demand for the world’s adult leaders to take immediate and drastic measures to reduce carbon emissions. As a fellow activist told Wired magazine in 2019, “I joined Greta because youths are strong but we are even stronger together.”

Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome, a neurological difference she calls her “superpower” because it enables her to speak frankly and unequivocally about the climate emergency. “People with Asperger’s and autism, we don’t follow social codes,” she told the New York Times in 2020. “We don’t care what people think about us.”

Indeed, the activist is known for framing the climate crisis, and what she sees as a dereliction of moral leadership, in the starkest possible terms. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019, she said, “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic…I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.” Later that year, addressing the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City, she said, “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

A model of courage and self-sacrifice, Thunberg has become the most prominent voice of the global climate movement. Steadfastly focused on using her platform to invigorate climate action, she established the Greta Thunberg Foundation in 2020 as a transparent way to distribute any prize money, book royalties or donations she receives to organizations dedicated to social justice and environmental sustainability.

Through her unique example – an inspiring blend of humility, generosity and relatability that journalists, researchers and other observers refer to as the “Greta effect” – Thunberg has energized a new era of political action, marshaling the collective power of her generation in pursuit of a more equitable and sustainable future.

Contributor: Erin Brown