Greta Thunberg, The Young Activist Who Wants To Wake Up The World

Greta Thunberg may not save the world from impending climate disaster. However, what this 16-year-old girl will achieve is to wake up an entire generation and rise as that figure capable of challenging the “rich men in gray suits”. We may not see results imminent, but tomorrow this inspiring movement that emerged from the Fridays for future may mean an improvement on our planet and ecosystems.

Sometimes what our society needs are media figures like Greta Thunberg. In some ways, most of us don’t like leaders, but we do have a predilection for symbols. This young Swedish activist is outlining with each one of her performances and appearances a phenomenon that arrives and that transcends. She is the ‘green girl’, she is the young woman who wants to change the world and the voice that is capturing the mood of thousands of people.

She, obviously, is not talking about anything new, about anything that most of us already knew. Climate change is real, it is happening and the consequences may be irreversible. However, Greta Thunberg is getting the message across in another way. It attracts her youth, the forcefulness of her speeches, her serious and defiant demeanor, and above all, that iron commitment that she explains is due to her Asperger status.

Be that as it may, this young woman has become an icon, making climate change one of the main concerns of our schoolchildren.

Who is Greta Thunberg?

Greta Thunberg was born in Sweden on January 3, 2003. Her family is quite well known in the art world. His mother, Malena Ernman, is an opera singer, his father Svante Thunberg, is a well-known actor, as is his grandfather, Olof Thunberg. All this would undoubtedly make us think that, in view of the media role of her closest environment, Greta could be the orchestrated result of a well-planned strategy.

However, as the parents have explained more than once, their daughter has always been very conscientious about the environment. To this is added Asperger’s syndrome, which often causes each hobby, interest or concern to often become an obsession. That was the case with Greta Thunberg.

It was she who convinced her parents to be vegetarians. At the age of 11, he suffered a deep depression due to climate change. She felt dejected as the main countries of the world continued with the same abusive and harmful policies with the environment. When he was in the ninth grade, he refused to go to school. He wanted the Swedish government to cut carbon emissions based on the Paris Agreement.

Likewise, Greta has also suffered episodes of selective mutism, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and cannot prevent the planet, her balance, defense and well-being from being her main concern.

No one is too small to change the world

This same year Greta has published the book  No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (translated as Nobody is too small to change things , Penguin publishing house ). Also, just a few days ago, the young woman was crossing the Atlantic with a sailboat to attend the conference on climate change in New York, trying to raise awareness of the need to reduce our air travel to avoid CO2 emissions.

Once again, he garnered worldwide media attention, headlined newspapers, and coined  hashtags. He awakened consciences when he spoke to us again, of those rich men with money who do not care about the next generations because – according to Greta herself – they will be dead before the planet falls.

It should also be noted that she is the one who writes her speeches, and she is the one who started these strikes at school every Friday, until little by little, classmates joined her. After months, the Fridays for future in defense of the climate crossed the borders of Sweden to reach the whole world.

New times, new leaders

To conclude, something that we are witnessing is that the new transforming symbols do not look too much like the Luther Kings or the Gandhis. Today the younger generations are in command, such as Malala and of course, Greta Thunberg herself.

The alarm for the climate crisis well deserves people like her, girls and boys committed to their speech and their goal. Let us therefore hope that his message arrives and that our young people will be that change tomorrow that today’s adults do not initiate, by turning their faces the other way.