![What it feels like to be Greta Thunberg, right now](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2019/09/28/greta_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=680)
What it feels like to be Greta Thunberg, right now
![What it feels like to be Greta Thunberg, right now](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2019/09/28/greta_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpg?imwidth=680)
The teen has inspired a global movement - and death threats. Eleanor Steafel, in Stockholm, talks to those who know her best
It has been a watershed week in the spotlight for Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old general of a worldwide teen army, who crossed the Atlantic on an eco yacht. It began with a speech to hundreds of thousands of school strikers in New York last Friday, on a day of global action inspired by the solo protest she began outside the Swedish parliament last year. Then came Monday’s fiery address to the UN’s Climate Action Summit, watched by millions around the world and swiftly followed by an obligatory Twitter stand-off with President Trump (which, most agree, Thunberg roundly won).
Meanwhile, the backlash has been mounting and vicious trolls, many times her age, have been piling up. Thunberg’s passion is undeniable, but for some, she represents everything they find distasteful about preaching activists — “the pigtailed prophet of planetary paranoia,” as one commentator put it. Others have openly expressed concern about her emotional state and mental health. And many more have flocked to support her, urging denigrators not to “confuse passion for hysteria” and holding ‘Greta the Great’ up as a beacon of hope.
Whatever your take, it is a lot for young shoulders to bear; and easy to forget that until this time last year, they belonged to an anonymous Swedish teenager. In her TED talk in January she revealed she was eight years old when she first heard about climate change, and found it “too unreal” that no one was doing anything about it. By the age of 11, she had become depressed, stopped eating and speaking. She was later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism. This means, she explained, that she only speaks when she thinks it’s necessary – “now is one of those moments”.
Her friends and comrades, some 4,000 miles away back in Stockholm, watched her UN speech live in the early hours of and wept. “I think we all cried,” says Isabelle Axelsson, a co-founder of the school strike movement which Thunberg pioneered. “We weren’t expecting it to be so emotional.”
I meet Isabelle and her twin sister Sophia in the small sunlit square in front of the Riksdag, the imposing Swedish government building where they have sat each morning since their friend set sail, last month. The 18 year-olds have both dedicated their lives to the cause since becoming inspired by Thunberg (like many other Swedish teens) to participate in the Friday school strike she began on her own last August, a lonely figure with a hand-painted sign reading *Skolstrejk för klimatet*.
The twins' teachers and parents were broadly supportive of them joining her, and both found their grades improved despite missing school once a week. “I studied a lot during the weekends, I was less sick, less depressed at home, I had more energy,” Isabelle tells me, as confidently and eloquently as Thunberg.
It has been hard though, she says, to watch her friend in the line of fire this week. “Greta doesn’t want to have all the focus on her but she has realised that this is how we can break through, this is how we can make a difference.
“It’s a lot of pressure. Both because we need to succeed [...] and then also because people are watching us. I think there’s some form of worry from many people about how she’s doing and the pressure, because it’s not only trolling and hate for her, she gets literal death threats.”
![Twin sisters Isabelle and Sophia](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2019/09/27/TELEMMGLPICT000210995372_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The general consensus among climate commentators is that she is “strikingly non-radical”, yet adults clearly find her unnerving. “This child – and she is a child – has been scared and her parents are letting her be controlled by that fear,” said the American Right-wing commentator, Erick Erickson in a post about “the Left’s abusive use of Greta”, in which he blamed her parents for “depriving her of a sound education so she can lecture grown-ups.”
Her friends and fellow strikers tell me this couldn’t be further from the truth. Thunberg’s revolution started at home, but when she first approached her parents with the idea of striking, they were unconvinced. “They did not support the idea of school striking and they said that if I were to do this I would have to do it completely by myself and with no support from them,” Thunberg has said.
She eventually convinced her family to start lowering their carbon footprint by adopting a vegan diet and giving up air travel, which also meant her mother, Malena Ernman, a famous opera singer in Sweden, had to give up performing internationally. Her father Svante, a former actor, now follows his eldest daughter around the world, while his wife and their other daughter Beata (a budding singer like her mother) stay in the family home – a modest apartment block in a leafy, middle class area of Stockholm, which feels a world away from the UN stage in Manhattan. Here, families ride bicycles to school and work, many of the cars and taxis are electric, and weekends are about getting out into nature. “We spent a lot of time in the forest as children,” says Isabelle.
“Greta and her dad are a great team,” says Torunn Hansen-Tangen, a mother-of-three who stands alongside Thunberg at the Stockholm strike every Friday. “As a mum I worry about putting someone in the spotlight so young. She has the world on her shoulders now. But she seems to have amazing parents. Her dad is very supportive, he’s always there giving her lunch and helping her with the journalists. As I understand it she’s pretty unstoppable. It’s pretty hard to tell her what to do.”
![Greta Thunberg talks to Angela Merkel during the UN Climate Action Summit](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/women/2019/09/27/TELEMMGLPICT000210626015_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
In Sweden, she is roundly adored by media and politicians alike. “What she is saying, her passion, it isn’t too much for us here,” one leading Swedish journalist tells me. “She is from a normal and very nice family. She is well loved and taken seriously here on both sides of the political landscape.”
Outside Sweden, however, the level of vitriol has been steadily rising. Leave.EU donor Arron Banks hinted he’d like her to become the victim of a “freak yachting accident” as her voyage began and suggestions have been made that there is a team of puppeteers behind her stratospheric rise. At first, she was affiliated with We Don’t Have Time, a non-profit foundation set up by Swedish climate entrepreneur Ingmar Rentzhog, after he met her outside the Riksdag in the early days of her protest and signed her up to be a youth advisor. They parted ways last year, after the company used her name without her permission to promote the start-up arm of their business.
These days, Thunberg receives input for her speeches from scientists, but insists there is no great team of communications experts or money men behind her, pulling the strings. “People love to spread rumours saying that I have people ‘behind me’ or that I’m being ‘paid’ or ‘used’ to do what I’m doing,” Thunberg wrote on Facebook. “There is no one ‘behind me’ except myself.”
Ebba Gärdekrans, 19, has known Thunberg for years, as both girls attended the same school for children with additional needs, in a nondescript suburb of Stockholm.
She has watched her friend come out of her shell as her profile has grown. “I have known her since I was a kid. I knew her before she was outspoken,” she tells me, amid the hubbub of the 30,000-strong march that moved through the streets of Stockholm yesterday. “When I saw her speech this week I was just in shock. It made me cry. We all have a lot of pressure but I can’t imagine being the focus of the whole movement.
“I was like her. I was not able to speak in front of people and now I can. Having this cause has made me more confident and I think it has for Greta, too.”
Previously, when Thunberg’s army of school strikers took to the streets, the only adults among them were parents keeping a watchful eye as their children shout: “You will die of old age, I will die of climate change!”
Today, on a beautiful autumnal morning in Stockholm, thousands more older people have joined them on the streets, walking towards parliament in peaceful protest, many of them holding pictures of Thunberg, or playing videos of Monday’s speech on their phones.
“Let’s build a better world,” their placards say, “before it’s too late.”
‘My 16 year-old also addressed the UN’
By Carly Jones, MBE
When Greta Thunberg likened her Asperger syndrome to a superpower, I knew exactly what she meant. I have a daughter of almost the same age and she too is on the autism spectrum. Like Greta, my daughter Honey has addressed the United Nations, in her case to advocate for women and girls with autism. She was only 14 at the time, but strong-willed and determined to speak up for something she believed in. I certainly would not have tried to stop her.
Many teenage girls simply would not have the confidence to do this. But being autistic can make embarrassment less likely; likewise, the shyness and self-consciousness that would hold back the average adolescent. I know this not only from having not one but two autistic daughters (the other is 11), but because I myself was diagnosed five years ago, at the age of 32.
The other gift autism can bring is the incredible commitment that the world has seen in Greta, and which I have seen in Honey. I don’t wish to glamorise autism, because it brings many challenges and vulnerabilities, too. But when it comes to our interests and passions, we are fierce. We can be blinkered, relentlessly focused and we strategise phenomenally well. A particular concern for the environment is a common feature, and we find ourselves especially keen to fix things. Just like some want to fix a broken computer, some of us strive to fix broken elements of society.
Honey sought to clear up misunderstandings of females on the spectrum. To Greta, the environment is broken, and she’s clear about her mission to mend it.
Anyone who thinks she is somebody’s puppet is therefore greatly mistaken. Just try and tell a young person on the spectrum what to do and you’ll find you won’t get very far.
Greta has been under considerable stress and strain, and I do feel a certain protectiveness over her, as well as some concern about the negative comments her determination has attracted. But in some ways her Asperger’s protects her. When Donald Trump, the US president, seemed to mock her on Twitter this week, it may not have caused her any more pain than if someone with no power or status had done so, because being on the spectrum can mean you care little for hierarchy.
Likewise, some suggested her face looked disturbed when she arrived in New York, whereas I suspect this wasn’t quite true. The fact was she had just got off a boat. Being suddenly in a noisy, smelly city may have overwhelmed her sensory system, as is common for people like us.
My daughter Honey now channels her considerable energies into drama. Perhaps she’ll be back in the spotlight some day herself. If she is, I’ll be standing right behind her. Because, as Greta has shown, once someone like her or Honey has set their mind to something, they’ll not stop until it’s been accomplished.
As told to Rosa Silverman