This portrait is about Greta Thunberg’s journey to becoming a global phenomenon and leader in the ever-growing youth movement against climate change. It is mainly based on (the German edition of) Scener ur hjärtat (Scenes from the heart), a book authored by Greta’s family, written as a first person 92-scene narrative in the voice of Greta’s mother. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are translations from the German edition of this family narrative, references with the scene number.

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Overture.

 

Solidarity & Justice. Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is born on 3 January 2003 in Stockholm Sweden. Her mother, Malena Ernman is an internationally renowned opera singer with engagements at a number of European opera houses. Her father, Svante Thunberg is an actor, as were his father Olof Thunberg and mother Mona Andersson. Before Greta’s birth, Svante works in three Stockholm theatres simultaneously. On a long-distance call he and Malena try to figure out how re-organise their life to care for the baby. Svante decides to quit acting and look after the baby full time, or as he told Maestro Barenboim and Cecilia Bartoli in Berlin: “So now I’m a housewife.”[S.3]

Malena was born in Sandvik, a small town 200 km north of Stockholm. “By and large, we were a perfectly normal Swedish small-town family. The only thing that might have set us apart was the extraordinary engagement of my parents for people in need.”[S.2] This may be the reason for Malena’s strong sense of social (in-) justice: “The richest ten percent in the world are responsible for half of the emitted greenhouse gasses … The poorer half of the global population is only responsible for ten percent. Looking for role models, we are probably more likely to find someone there than with celebrities like me.”[S.89]

Greta is equally, if not more, indignant when confronted with positions she considers to be unjust or unjustifiable. When confronted with the argument that the real problem behind climate change is population size, Greta replies: “if you are of the opinion that the population should be reduced in order to save resources, you should start a campaign for the elimination of billionaires. … It could be somewhat difficult to get the UN to pass such a resolution, which is why I would instead recommend you reduce your own carbon emissions. Or help educate girls in poor countries, for that would be the most effective way to stem population growth”[S.62], which of course links her directly with the cause of another global superstar activist portrayed in this showcase: Malala!

The extraordinary engagement for people in need continues to be practised in Greta’s family. When in 2015 millions of Syrians were forced to flee their homeland because of war, the family, on suggestion by Greta and her younger sister Beata open their summer home to a refugee family to stay while they are seeking asylum.

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Flying Celebrities.

 

Malena is pursuing her vocation as an opera singer. Between 2004 and 2011 alone she sings in Brussels, Aix en Provence, Vienna, Paris, Vienna, Aix, Brussels, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Salzburg, Vienna, Aix, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Vienna, Amsterdam, Brussels, Stockholm, Vienna. She also does concert performances in Rome, Madrid, Paris, London, Los Angeles, Berlin and Tokyo. While she was well-known before, she becomes “famous”[S.15], a “celebrity”, when she is chosen to represent Sweden in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow.

The second part of family narrative, entitled Burnt-out People on a Burnt-out Planet begins [S.27] with a frank account of Greta’s views of her mother’s life-style. “At breakfast, Greta tells me ‘you celebrities are for the environment what Jimmie Åkesson’ – the right-wing populist – ‘is to multiculturalism!’”  While concurring that “from an environmental perspective people like me are among the worst” Malena is still hurt by the comparison and counters that without touring she has no income. But Greta insists: “Name me one celebrity who is engaged in fighting climate change? Name me one celebrity willing to give up the luxury to crisscross the globe by air?”

Greta’s total and persistent rejection of air travel (“by far the worst that an individual can do to climate”[S.53]) is home grown and leads Malena, who gave up flying in 2016, and others to publicly renouncing air travel in June 2017, marking the beginning of what has become a global phenomenon: flygskam (flight shame), “the feeling of climate guilt associated with airline travel” as the Financial Times explained it.

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Into the Abyss.

 

August 2015. Greta is 12 and enters 5th grade. “She is not well. She cries in the evening when she goes to bed. She cries on the way to school. She cries during the lessons and in the breaks.”[S.4] One evening in late October, Malena and Svante “sit on the floor of their bathroom. It is late. The kids are asleep. All around us collapses. … Our daughter disappears into a sort of darkness and practically stops functioning. She stops playing the piano. She stops laughing. She stops talking. She stops eating.”[S.4] Malena decides to quit opera and on 2 November gives her last performance in Sweden.

A psychologist at Greta’s school calls her parents and tells them that she has clear signs of autism. There follows a long series of consultations including the clinic for child and adolescent psychology, and the centre for eating disorders. “After two months of not eating, Greta has lost almost ten kilogrammes, which is a lot for someone of a small and delicate stature. She is too weak to climb stairs, and has reached astronomical levels in the depression tests administered to her.”[S.9] 2015, mid-November. There is another crisis meeting with doctors, who are telling Greta that if there is no improvement by the weekend, she will have to be hospitalised.

 

The Phoenix.

 

Greta is diagnosed with High Functioning Autism (Asperger Syndrome). She starts eating again. “Half a year after Greta’s diagnosis our life has calmed down a bit … Greta is going to a new school. I have cut down my engagements to the absolute minimum.”[S.18] In 2016, Beata is diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder (ADHS), and at the age of 45, so is Malena. Greta manages to extricate herself from her crippling depression by taking up the fight against climate change, beginning at home by convincing her parents to stop flying and become vegan. This is when she first realised that, as she later put it in the title of her 2019 book: