Hate. Naked, cold hatred. Anyone looking for “Greta Memes” on the Internet opens up a look into the abyss. Greta: blame everything. A spoiled brat, mentally handicapped, not quite responsible, angry. A PR puppet by her parents and clever entrepreneurs who want to do big business. Other Greta haters disparage them as the mouthpiece of secret powers that try to enforce eco-socialist ideas. Air fascists.
“All nonsense,” says David Fopp, a Swiss living in Stockholm, who knows the 17-year-old Swede personally. “Greta is an independent personality, nobody can take her away,” he says. The 47-year-old, who works as a lecturer in pedagogy at the University of Stockholm, has himself been a climate activist for many years – and one of Greta’s first colleagues.
The activists
It belongs to the hard core of young people and adults who joined Greta’s strikes in Stockholm. They gather every Friday in front of the Swedish Reichstag. After the first school strikes, Fridays for Future websites and social media accounts quickly emerged. An internationally networked grass root movement developed from this. The branch of “Fridays for Future” plays an important, very active role in Switzerland, says Fopp. The Swiss activists organize themselves under the name “Climate strike / Grève du climat”.
Supporter David Fopp. Photo: PD
According to Fopp, the Greta team are the hundreds of young people in 120 countries who built the climate strike movement with her. Feta says that Greta is in regular contact with many of them. “That is why, as a team, they are doing their job together: getting politics to act, stopping emissions and mitigating the climate crisis.”
Despite the huge media hype surrounding her, Greta has remained the same, says climate activist David Fopp.
Greta is always part of the school strikes in Stockholm when she is not on the road to demonstrate with like-minded people against the impending climate catastrophe. For example, on Friday during the climate strike in Lausanne. Or next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she will speak to the powerful in conscience – like last year’s WEF.
David Fopp observed up close how the shy girl, who hardly spoke, became the leader of global climate youth within a few months. Despite the huge media hype about her, Greta has remained the same, he says.
The parents
Her parents contributed significantly to Greta’s struggle for more climate protection. The father accompanies his daughter on her travels, most recently when she sails across the Atlantic. In August 2018, when the young Swede started to strike, the Thunbergs published a book entitled “Scenes from the Heart. Our life for the climate ». Contrary to what critics claim, the Thunbergs do not earn anything from the bestseller. The proceeds go to WWF, Greenpeace and other organizations, as the Thunberg family writes in the foreword to their book.
In their book, the parents, Malena Ernman and Svante Thunberg, describe how Greta first heard about climate change as a child and then could not stop thinking about it. Greta is said to have convinced her parents to change her lifestyle. From then on, the mother stopped flying, the father became a vegan. Greta had suffered from depression, the father recently said in a BBC interview. Since becoming involved in the climate, Greta has been a “very happy young person”.
Greta’s parents have been known in Sweden for many years. The mother, 49 years old, was an internationally celebrated opera singer. The father, 50 years old, actor and author, manages his wife, who is currently working as a musical actress in Stockholm. Svante Thunberg also runs a music production company. The popularity of parents and their networking in Swedish society has definitely helped the climate struggle of Greta at home. But that was just the beginning.
The NGOs and the media professionals
Greta would hardly have become a global icon if the international media hadn’t covered it as extensively. When the young Swede traveled to Davos by train last January and performed at the WEF, it was a global media spectacle. The special personality of Greta and the dramatic climate change: This offers a lot that makes good stories. Right-wing media and bloggers like to spread the story that Greta is part of a systematic PR campaign by a Swedish start-up entrepreneur. However, the independent fact checkers on the German website Correctiv found no evidence of this.
Greta herself is a media professional. She uses her Twitter account herself, as David Fopp affirms. Father Svante is the contact person for journalists and organizers. But it doesn’t work without professional help. To help deal with the flood of inquiries, two volunteers are helping, free of charge. Both are media professionals, otherwise they work for GSCC, a PR company in the field of climate protection.
“Fridays for Future” is also supported by many “grassroots” movements and by small and large non-governmental organizations that are committed to climate protection. They used to work side by side, but now stand behind the climate youth around Greta as a united civil society. In December 2018, the “Climate Justice Now” network made it possible for the then-unknown Swede to appear at the UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland. For Greta, Katowice was an international breakthrough. A year later, the US magazine “Time” named the young climate activist “Person of the Year”.
The scientists
Well-known climate researchers enjoy Greta’s commitment. “It is reaching its generation,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, professor at the renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Greta delights students because she is not just any adult, but one of them.” Rahmstorf is one of around ten scientists with whom Greta regularly exchanges ideas before speaking. Another in the circle of experts is Glen Peters, research director of the Cicero Center for Climate Research in Oslo.
Scientist Kevin Anderson. Photo: PD
Greta’s main scientific sparring partner is Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at Manchester University. The 56-year-old previously worked as director of the Tyndall Center, the UK’s leading climate change research organization. The Thunberg family has known Anderson since a visiting professorship at the University in Uppsala (Sweden). Like all of Greta’s companions, Anderson also emphasizes the independence of the young climate activist. “What you hear from Greta Thunberg’s mouth is what Greta Thunberg thinks about and what she then writes down,” Anderson said in a “Spiegel” interview last year. “Greta sends me manuscripts and asks me to check whether everything is correct.”
According to Anderson, Greta knows “an incredible amount about climate change and she is constantly learning new things”. In conversations with her, he often had the impression that he was talking to a younger research colleague, not a teenager. Greta manages to summarize tons of information into concise, simple, honest messages. In doing so, she takes no account of the sensitivities of interest groups or politicians. “Greta doesn’t care what others think of her.”
Created: 01/15/2020, 08:25 PM
–
