A slightly more accurate description of her young life.
Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003, in
Stockholm, Sweden,
[16][17] the daughter of opera singer
Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg.
[18][19] Her paternal grandfather was actor and director
Olof Thunberg.
[20][21][22] She has a younger sister, Beata.
[19]
From her
TEDx Talk
— Greta Thunberg, Stockholm, November 2018
[23]
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.
[24][19] The situation made her
depressed and as a result, at the age of 11, she stopped talking and eating much and lost ten kilograms (22 lb) in two months.
[25] Eventually, she was diagnosed with
Asperger syndrome,
obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), and
selective mutism.
[24][19] In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Thunberg described the selective mutism aspect of her condition as meaning she "only speaks when necessary".
[24]
Thunberg struggled with depression for almost three or four years before she began her school strike campaign.
[26] When she started protesting, her parents did not support her activism. Her father said he does not like her missing school but said: "[We] respect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest, and be happy."
[27] Her diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome was made public nationwide in Sweden by her mother in May 2015, in order to help other families in a similar situation.
[28] While acknowledging that her diagnosis "has limited me before", Thunberg does not view her Asperger's as an illness, and has instead called it her "superpower".
[29] She was later described as being not only the best-known climate change activist, but also the best-known
autism activist.
[30] Thunberg commented in 2021 that many people in the
Fridays for Future movement had autism, and were very inclusive and welcoming. She thinks that the reason for so many people with autism becoming climate activists is that they cannot look away, and have to tell the truth as they see it: "I know lots of people who have been depressed, and then they have joined the climate movement or
Fridays for Future and have found a purpose in life and found friendship and a community that they are welcome in." She considers that the best thing that has come out of her activism has been friendship and happiness.
[30]
For about two years, Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family's
carbon footprint and overall
impact on the environment by becoming
vegan,
upcycling, and
giving up flying.
[18][31][32] She 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.
[33] Giving up flying in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an
opera singer.
[27] When interviewed in December 2019 by the
BBC, her father said: "To be honest, (her mother) didn't do it to save the climate. She 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 (Greta) grew from that, how much energy she got from it."
[34] Thunberg credits her parents' eventual response and lifestyle changes with giving her hope and belief that she could make a difference.
[18] When asked in September 2021 whether she felt guilty about ending her mother's career she was surprised by the question: "It was her choice. I didn't make her do anything. I just provided her with the information to base her decision on."
[30] The family story is recounted in the 2018 book
Scenes from the Heart,
[35] updated in 2020 as
Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, with contributions from the girls, and the whole family credited as authors.
[30]
Thunberg was a pupil at
Franska Skolan, a private school in central Stockholm, from 2010 to 2018,
[36][37] after which she transferred to Kringlaskolan, a school in
Södertälje.
[38] In 2019 she completed the 9th grade (the completion of
lower secondary education in Sweden) with excellent grades, 14 As, and Bs in three subjects:
[39] Swedish, home economics and physical education.
[40]
All from
Greta Thunberg - Wikipedia
