Three years on, Greta's gone global
Three years ago she was just a random teenager with a sign. Now Greta Thunberg is a household name, and she seems to be happy.
“In one way of course, I haven’t achieved anything.”
When you ask Greta Thunberg a question, you can never be quite sure what the answer is going to be.
Three years ago, on Aug 20 2018, she took a little sign into the centre of Stockholm and sat outside the Swedish parliament. She was skipping school to protest the inaction of politicians around climate change.
Three years later, she’s a global phenomenon, and no-one is really sure quite what happened.
I’ve interviewed her on several occasions, and Friday’s third anniversary was perhaps the happiest I’ve seen her.
It hasn’t always been this way for the teenager at the eye of a global storm.
There have been days when she has been tired or stressed or sullen, when she has given short answers to long questions (often the worst kind) and when she has looked like she would rather be anywhere else than here today, as Elvis Costello put it in Oliver’s Army.
Part of the grammar of video news reporting is filming arrivals and departures - you’ll see those kinds of shots everywhere from courthouses to red carpets, but Greta was never a big fan of me or anyone else filming her as she arrives on her bike.
She understands the power she wields, not least on social media, but it’s something she still does unwillingly. She has never said as much but she gives the impression that she would much rather have the climate crisis solved and never have to speak into a microphone again.
Others are stepping up - Isabelle Axelsson is an erudite and loquacious spokesperson and a longtime friend of Greta’s - but the media is stubborn. The kid in the yellow raincoat is the one they all want to hear from, regardless of what the others are saying.
That alone brings with it enormous pressure for a kid who only turned 18 in January. In 2017 Conor McGregor spoke to me about how there is no handbook for fame, and he had an agent and the might of the UFC behind him.
What does a teenage schoolgirl have?
The clown car of contrarianism continues to spew forth an endless stream of buffoons who will claim that she’s a puppet and that there’s big money behind her and people telling her what to do. My simple answer to that is - try to set up an interview with her, and you’ll soon find out that the people helping her are amateurs doing their best.
Sports stars and movie actors have an army of PR advisors and handlers, interview schedules, media contacts, handout images, B-roll and press releases all to feed the media beast.
Greta … doesn’t.
There’s a couple of people you can email - her dad and one or two other adults, a couple of people at NGOs, and that’s about it. She does things when she wants to do them, and only then - other times, she doesn’t have anything to say, so she simply keeps quiet. It’s a trait many of us could learn from.
She is well aware that the knives are out for her, and that people are eager to find a picture or a quote that would show her up to be a hypocrite or somehow damage her credibility.
This is a kid who sailed across the Atlantic because she’s not a big fan of aviation emissions. Something tells me they’re gonna be waiting a long time.
On Friday, as she marked the third anniversary surrounded by friends and fellow activists, she was happy, and that’s no mean feat.
She and two other friends danced like crabs as they recorded a video for a friend in Gothenburg. I told her I liked her t-shirt. Usually she’d just say thanks for the compliment, but this time she told me her sister got it for her.
For around half the time that she and her friends have been protesting - and she is very keen for others in the Fridays For Future movement to become spokespeople, to be seen and heard - the pandemic has been part of the landscape.
On Friday they gathered outdoors, to celebrate three years of activism and friendship.
They painted signs together, talked and laughed and did things other kids in the final couple of years of secondary school would do. They enjoyed each other’s company, even if they’re not entirely sure what the future holds for them or their planet.
After a while I decided I couldn’t intrude any more. I had my interview and my clips of her painting her sign, and of Isabelle telling me why she was painting a forest.
They weren’t done, and I would miss one last wide shot of them all holding up their signs for a camera, but by then I had left.
By then they had given me the material I needed for the news story, so there was no need to stay on any further, getting in the way of kids being kids.
I asked her if she could talk to her 15-year-old self, what would she say? What advice would she give the younger Greta?
The pause was a long one, but the wait was worth it as a wry smile crept across her face.
"I don't know - I don't usually spend time thinking about things I could have done. I rather try to do things I want to do now and try to impact the future instead of the past."
You can see the report I did for Reuters here.
The Podcast
… hasn’t happened as planned this week - there’s three wildly different episodes in the pipeline but none of them made it into the recording software this week.
Thanks to all who suggested female guests to me, especially Tomás O’Conghaile who came up with some crackers - I will start looking into them from Monday.