- In full:
- Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg
Greta Thunberg
Who is Greta Thunberg?
What was Greta Thunberg diagnosed with?
Why did Greta Thunberg stop eating and talking when she was 11?
News •
Greta Thunberg was just eight years old when she became passionate about about climate change. By the time she was 15, she had founded Fridays for Future (also called School Strike for Climate), which garnered international attention and made her one of the most recognizable faces of the climate change movement. The Swedish environmental activist was credited with shifting some people’s views and behaviors regarding climate change, and her influence is known as “the Greta effect.”
Early life
- Birthdate: January 3, 2003
- Education: She attended high school, but has not attended college
- Best known for: Raising global awareness about climate change.
- Family: Her father Svante Thunberg is an actor; her mother Malena Ernman is an opera singer. She has a younger sister.
- Quotation: “Being different is a superpower.”
Thunberg’s mother was an opera singer, and her father was an actor. She first learned about climate change when she as a young girl, and she soon changed her own habits, becoming a vegan and refusing to travel by airplane. (Both livestock and airplanes emit a large amount of the gases that contribute to global warming.)
When she was 11 years old, Thunberg became depressed by the lack of action being taken to combat climate change. She rarely spoke and barely ate. Soon after Thunberg was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which is now considered an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is characterized by abnormalities in social interactions (as in classic autism) but with normal intelligence and language development. People with Asperger syndrome tend to focus deeply on one idea or interest, and Thunberg’s cause became climate change.
Activism
Climate change
Seeking to make a greater impact, Thunberg attempted to spur lawmakers into addressing climate change. For almost three weeks in the run-up to the Swedish election in September 2018, she missed school to sit outside the country’s parliament with a sign that stated “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” (School Strike for Climate). Although alone for the first day of the strike, she was joined each subsequent day by more and more people, and her story garnered international attention.
Climate change refers to long-term alterations in Earth’s climate patterns, including shifts in temperature, precipitation, and weather events.
Human activities are increasingly seen as causes of climate change, including:
- fossil fuel burning
- industrial operations
These activities send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. The consequences of climate change include:
- changes to ecosystems
- threats to health and economies
After the election Thunberg returned to school but continued to skip classes on Fridays to strike, and these days were called Fridays for Future. The movement spread rapidly through student networks and social media, becoming one of the largest youth-led global protest movements in history. Her action inspired hundreds of thousands of students around the world to participate in their own Fridays for Future. Strikes were held around the world in countries including Belgium, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands.
The goal of Thunberg’s climate activism was to influence national governments and encourage international climate agreements. As a political movement, Fridays for Future garnered global attention. For example, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2021 that the government had not done enough to protect the environment. But in other world capitals, the young activists—who were predominately under 25—and their concerns were largely dismissed. Even so, scientists paid attention, and the movement gained the support of thousands of them.
Thunberg received numerous invitations to speak about climate change. She gave speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the European Parliament as well as in front of the legislatures of Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
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In September 2019 she delivered a pointed speech to world leaders at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City. Thunberg traveled to the UN on an emissions-free boat and drew particular attention for her impassioned comments:
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words…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!
That month millions of protesters marched in climate strikes in more than 163 countries. While Thunberg was credited with shifting some people’s views and behaviors regarding climate change—her influence was known as “the Greta effect”—she was not without detractors. Brazilian Pres. Jair Bolsonaro notably called her a “brat” in 2019. That same year Time magazine named Thunberg their “Person of the Year.”
Other causes
Thunberg, who graduated high school in 2023, has not limited her activism to climate change. She has also spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022– ), and she has expressed support for Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas War (2023– ).
“Being different is a superpower.”
—Greta Thunberg on Asperger syndrome
Thunberg has explicitly connected her positions on Ukraine and Gaza to her broader climate activism by arguing that climate justice is inseparable from social and humanitarian justice. In response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, she condemned the war and highlighted its environmental consequences, describing what she called “ecocide,” including the environmental damage caused by the collapse of a dam and attacks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
In October 2023 she expressed that she “stands with Gaza” and that her opposition to what she described as war crimes aligns with humanitarian positions grounded in her climate activism.
In June 2025 Thunberg was among a group of activists on board an aid ship headed to the Gaza Strip. However, Israel seized the vessel, which was operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and Thunberg was among those taken into custody and later deported. Several months later she was on another flotilla that attempted—but failed—to reach the Gaza Strip. Since 2007 Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza.
Additional activities
In addition to her environmental work, Thunberg was credited with raising awareness about Asperger and inspiring those who had the disorder. While acknowledging that Asperger had hampered her in some ways, she also noted its advantages, at one point tweeting: “I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And—given the right circumstances—being different is a superpower.”
Her books include No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019), a collection of her speeches, and The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions (2023). The documentary I Am Greta appeared in 2020.