Greta Thunberg: Who is the climate activist and what has she achieved?

Greta Thunberg is to appear in court after being arrested at an anti-oil protest in Sweden.

The 20-year-old has become one of the world’s best-known campaigners against climate change.

Who is Greta Thunberg and how did she become a climate activist?

Greta Thunberg was born in the Swedish capital Stockholm in 2003 to father Svante, an actor, and mother Ernman, an opera singer.

She first learned about climate change when she was eight.

At the age of 11 or 12, she started suffering from depression, according to her father, Svante: “She stopped talking… she stopped going to school,” he said.

Around the same time she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.

Greta at a ‘school strike’ in 2018. She was 15 when she began the protests

In summer 2018, aged 15, Ms Thunberg held the first “School Strike for Climate” outside the Swedish parliament.

The protest was widely covered the international media, and hundreds of thousands of young people across the world joined her Fridays For Future strikes.

Mr Thunberg says Greta became “much happier” after she started campaigning.

She has described her autism diagnosis as a “superpower” which has helped motivate her protests.

“Being different is a gift,” she told the BBC. “If I would’ve been like everyone else, I wouldn’t have started this school strike, for instance.”

Between 2019 and 2020, she took a year out of school to concentrate on environmental activism, and became famous for her impassioned speeches to world leaders.

She left school in summer 2023, and ended her school climate strikes.

What have been her most famous speeches?

In April 2019, aged 16, Greta Thunberg told members of the European Parliament: “Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly, because at the moment they are not.”

Five months later, she sailed by yacht across the Atlantic to address a UN climate action summit in New York.

“I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” she told delegates. “Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

Speaking at a youth protest in Glasgow in 2021, following the COP26 climate change summit, she said: “[World leaders have held] 26 COPs. They have had decades of blah, blah, blah – and where has that got us?”

What awards has she won?

Greta Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year between 2019 and 2023.

In 2019, she became the youngest-ever Time Person of the Year.

Also in 2019, she won the Right Livelihood Award (known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) and Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, and was listed by Forbes as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women.

In 2022, she brought out The Climate Book, which contains essays from 100 scientists, writers, activists and thinkers on ways to combat the climate crisis.

Why was she arrested?

In July 2023, she was fined for refusing to leave a protest at the port of Malmo, in southern Sweden, in June.

Greta Thunberg was fined for refusing to leave a demonstration in Malmo in June, 2023

Acting with the group Reclaim the Future, she blocked a road which was used for transporting oil.

She will appear in court via video link on 11 October, having been charged with committing another, similar offence at the port.

In July, she was given a small fine for the first offence. She could be given a harsher sentence if convicted a second time.

What criticism has she received?

At the start of 2023, controversial media personality Andrew Tate baited Greta Thunberg on X, formerly Twitter, by listing his 33 cars and offering to send her details of their “enormous emissions”.

She responded with a sarcastic tweet which was liked by several million people and shared widely.

Shortly afterwards, broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer called her “a half-educated, autistic, doom-mongering eco-cultist,” in a tweet that she afterwards deleted.

Donald Trump said it was “ridiculous” that Time magazine nominated Greta Thunberg as its person of the year

She was also mocked on Twitter by former US President Donald Trump when she won the Time magazine award. He said: “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem… Chill Greta, Chill!”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described her as a “kind, but poorly informed, teenager”.

What has her campaigning achieved?

Hundreds of thousands of young people around the world joined the Fridays for Future strikes

Although Greta Thunberg has not devised any specific environmental strategies, she is credited with raising public awareness of climate change across the world, especially amongst young people.

Many commentators call this “the Greta effect”.

Broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough told her: “You have aroused the world. I’m very grateful to you.”