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Friday, March 27, 2020

How one Swedish teenager armed with a homemade sign ignited a crusade and became the leader of a movement

By STEPHEN RODRICK MARCH 26, 2020

There is persona and there is reality in Greta Thunberg. It is Valentine’s Day in her hometown of Stockholm, but there’s only wind, no hearts and flowers. A few hundred kids mill about, with a smattering of adults. If there were not signs reading “Our Earth, We Only Have One,” it could be mistaken for a field trip to the ABBA museum.

But where is Greta? I find a scrum of reporters interviewing a child in a purple puffer jacket, pink mittens, and a homemade-looking knit hat. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s Greta. She is 17, but could pass for 12. I can’t quite square the fiery speaker with the micro teen in front of me. She seems in need of protection.

Of course, this is emphatically wrong. Greta Thunberg has Asperger’s, which, she says, gives her pinpoint focus on climate minutiae while parrying and discarding even the smallest attempt at flattery. We stand near the Swedish Parliament house, where less than two years ago Thunberg started her Skolstrejk fรถr klimatet, School Strike for Climate.


Back then, it was just Greta, a sign, and a lunch of bean pasta in a reusable glass jar. Then it was two people, and then a dozen, and then an international movement. I mention the bravery of her speeches, but she waves me away. She wants to talk about the loss of will among the olds.

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Children of the Crisis


“It seems like the people in power have given up,” says Thunberg, taking her hat off and pushing back her mussed up brown-blond hair. She remains on message despite the tourists and teens taking her picture and mugging behind us. “They say it’s too hard — it’s too much of a challenge. But that’s what we are doing here. We have not given up because this is a matter of life and death for countless people.”

It was my second encounter with Greta in three weeks. Back in January, before the Coronavirus brought the world to its knees, forcing Greta to move her Friday protests online, she was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual conference of the World Economic Forum, where billionaires helo into the Swiss resort town and talk about solving the world’s problems without making their lives any harder. Thunberg had appeared last year and made her now iconic “Our House Is on Fire” speech, in which she declared the climate crisis to be the mortal threat to our planet. Solve it or all the other causes — feminism, human rights, and economic justice — would not matter.

“Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t,” said Thunberg with cold precision. “That is as black or white as it gets. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.”

The speech made Thunberg the unlikely and reluctant hero of the climate crisis. She crossed the ocean in a sailboat — she doesn’t fly for environmental reasons — to speak before the United Nations. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, conjuring the manic jealousy of Donald Trump, who called the honor “so ridiculous” and suggested she go to the movies and chill out.

In Davos, the illuminati prattled on about planting a trillion trees, even as we are still clear-cutting actual trees from the Amazon all the way to Thunberg’s beloved Sweden. This did not amuse nor placate the hoodie-wearing Greta. She seemed irritated and perhaps a little sick; she canceled an appearance the day before because she wasn’t feeling well. She was in no mood for flattery and nonsense. So when Time editor Edward Felsenthal asked her how she dealt with all the haters, Greta didn’t even try to answer diplomatically.

“I would like to say something that I think people need to know more than how I deal with haters,” she answered, before launching into details from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report. She mentioned that if we are to have even a 67 percent chance of limiting global temperature change to under 1.5 C, the point where catastrophic changes begin, we have less than 420 gigatons of CO2 that we can emit before we pass the no-going-back line. Thunberg stated that, at the current rate, we have eight years to change everything.

Thunberg’s face was controlled fury. This was the persona: an adolescent iron-willed truth teller. The Davos one-percenters clapped and rattled their Rolexes. It has become a disconcerting pattern for Thunberg appearances that would be repeated at the European Commission: Greta tells the adults they are fools and their plans are lame and shortsighted. They still give her a standing ovation. A few minutes later, she was gone and the audience dispersed into a fleet of black BMWs and Mercedes, belching diesel into the Alpine sky.

Greta Thunberg illustration by Shepard Fairey.
Based on a photograph by Markus Schreiber/AP Images/Shutterstock

My Greta travels featured a Vancouver-Zurich round trip and then an L.A.-Stockholm trip. In between, I fly from Vancouver to L.A. for another story. It’s the job, but I take stock in horror and calculate that my three flights burn more carbon than the yearly usage of the average citizen of more than 200 countries. I torch the atmosphere so I can hear others praise the girl who won’t fly.

“The phrase ‘A little child shall lead them’ has come to mind more than once,” Al Gore tells me in Davos, before sharing his favorite Greta moment. It was at the U.N. summit last fall. “She said to the assembled world leaders, ‘You say you understand the science, but I don’t believe you. Because if you did and then you continue to act as you do, that would mean you’re evil. And I don’t believe that.’” Gore shook his head in wonderment. “Wow.” He then gives a history lesson: “There have been other times in human history when the moment a morally-based social movement reached the tipping point was the moment when the younger generation made it their own. Here we are.”

Activist-actress Jane Fonda was so inspired by Greta that she has been hosting a series of Fire Drill Fridays. “I was just filled with depression and hopelessness, and then I started reading about Greta,” Fonda tells me one winter afternoon in Los Angeles. “She inspired me to get out there and do more.”

But in Stockholm, the world of presidential taunts, former vice presidents slathering praise, and Oscar winners rhapsodizing seems far away.

Outside of the Parliament building, Greta tells me she doesn’t worry about her safety despite Trump and others speaking cruelly about her on social media. (According to her mother, locals have shoved excrement into the family mailbox.) Later in February, she would march in Bristol, England, and be met by social media posts suggesting she deserved to be sexually assaulted.

“It’s just the people with 10 accounts who sit and write anonymously on Twitter and so on,” Greta says. “It’s nothing you can take seriously.”

Still, all is not rotten. America has come up with the Green New Deal. In Trumplandia, that seems like a beacon of hope, right?

Nope.

“If you look at the graphs to stay below the 1.5 degree Celsius global average temperature and you read the Green New Deal, you see that it doesn’t add up,” says Thunberg with some impatience. She references her Davos speech about how the world only has 420 gigatons of CO2 to burn over the next eight years or the 1.5 goal becomes impossible. “If we are to be in line with the carbon-dioxide budget, we need to focus on doing things now instead of making commitments like 10, or 20, 30 years from now. Of course, the Green New Deal is not in line with our carbon-dioxide budget.”

Meanwhile, the main criticism of the Green New Deal at home is that it moves too fast in getting the United States to zero carbon emission by 2050. But Greta doesn’t do politics.

“At least it has got people to start talking about the climate crisis more,” says Thunberg in a tone that suggests the slightest of praise. “That of course is a step in the right direction, I guess.”

There’s more to say, but now it’s time to march. The children’s crusade forms into a regimented mob. Greta moves to the front and holds a Skolstrejk fรถr klimatet banner with some other teens. The taller kids lift it too high, and she nearly vanishes. All you can see is Greta’s winter hat and her gray eyes. That’s enough.

Al Gore was right. A child leads us.

Technically, Greta Thunberg’s childhood continues for another year. But she hasn’t been a kid for some time. She is one of two daughters of Malena Ernman, an opera-singer-turned-Eurovision-contestant, and Svante Thunberg, an actor. According to the family’s book, Our House Is on Fire, the bohemian clan has endured a scroll of psychological disorders beginning with Malena, who suffered from bulimia and still deals with ADHD. Greta’s younger sister, Beata, was diagnosed with OCD and ADHD, and has an acute noise sensitivity, which has meant at times the rest of the family eating in a guest room with plastic plates to keep noise to a minimum. When Beata went to dance class, Malena wasn’t allowed to move during the two-hour session lest Beata have a tearful meltdown.

Greta battled her own life-threatening demons. When she was 11, she stopped eating and rarely spoke to anyone outside of her family for months. Sometimes she would come home after being bullied at school — recess was spent hiding out in the bathroom — and either spend hours petting her dogs or crying at her own pain. She lost 20 pounds as her parents chronicled her food intake. (“Five pieces of gnocchi in two hours.”)

Somehow, it was Greta turning her weakness into strength that made her a global icon. According to Malena, Greta fell silent after seeing a film in school depicting floating armies of plastic infesting our oceans. Other students were horrified, but quickly returned to their iPhones and talk of upcoming ski trips. Not Greta. She fell silent and obsessed over the climate’s demise.

“I felt very alone that I was the only one who seemed to be worried about this,” Greta tells me in Stockholm. “I was the only one left in this sort of bubble. Everyone else could just continue with their lives as usual, and I couldn’t do that.”

Greta read all she could and sometimes went online and battled with climate deniers, oft exclaiming triumphantly, “He blocked me,” to her parents. She eventually wrote an essay on the climate crisis for a Swedish newspaper. Eco-activists contacted her, and Greta mentioned the inspiration she took from the school strikes after the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting, and suggested a climate version. The activists showed little interest. Greta didn’t care and slowly broke out of her cocoon.

"I thought what the Parkland students did was so brave,” says Thunberg. “Of course, it was not the only thing that got me out of that feeling. I did it because I was tired of sitting and waiting. I tried to get others to join me, but no one was interested and no one wanted to do that. So I said, ‘I’m going to do this alone if no one else wants to do it.’ ”
So in August 2018, Greta and her father bicycled down to the Swedish Parliament, across the cobblestone street from where Greta and I now stand. She propped up the first Skolstrejk fรถr klimatet sign, which she’d made from scrap wood. Greta also wrote up an information sheet with climate data and a hint of the defiant humor that eventually led her to make her Twitter profile read, “A teenager working on her anger management problem,” after Trump told her to chill out. Her bio was simple:

“Because you grown-ups don’t give a damn about my future, neither do I. My name is Greta, I am in ninth grade, and I am going on strike from school for the climate.”

Photograph by Jack Davison for Rolling Stone

Her dad left, and she sat alone. She posted a couple of images to Instagram. It was passed on by a few of her followers. Then a reporter noticed. And then local activists from Greenpeace. Within two months, there were hundreds of fellow travelers, and the news spread through Scandinavia to Europe and on to America. Within a year, climate student strikes attracted tens of thousands, from London to New York.

Greta’s rise was the activist version of a perfect storm. Her ascension from bullied Swedish student to global climate icon has been driven by both a loss and a regaining of hope. It is not a coincidence that her ascent happened immediately in the aftermath of the election of Trump. It’s impossible to see a Greta-like phenomena emerging during the Obama-driven run up to the Paris climate talks, when it actually looked like nations of the world were getting their shit together to deal with global warming. It became obvious after Trump and the Paris implosion that 30 years of rhetoric and meetings had created very little except more talk.

And then you had the natural disasters. California could not stop burning. Floods ravaged Europe. We now watch glaciers melt and collapse in real time. The dawn of 2020 brought the Australian calamity, with images of scorched earth, koalas and kangaroos burned alive, and the death of a way of life.

The irony of the Greta Age is that we now have options, but refuse to take them. Clean-energy technology has evolved to a point where old arguments that fossil fuels remain the cheapest way to create energy are now obviously nonsense. The cost of clean energy is no longer a barrier to change. Over the past decade, it became an obvious truth: Burning fossil fuels no longer made economic sense anywhere, anytime. What remains is the power and influence of the energy conglomerate superpowers to maintain the status quo. No politician has the courage to face them down. By 2018, it became even clearer that politicians could not be trusted. Talk was wasted. Companies would continue to put profits before nature. We were on our own.

And that’s when Greta came along.

Thunberg’s perceived psychological weakness became her superpower. Her flat, affectless, blunt voice was the perfect counterpoint to the bureaucratic bullshit of the climate negotiators. It cut through all the gobbledygook about offsets and the economic necessity of coal and cost curves of solar power. She put it in simple human language: We are losing our planet. Unlike many activists before her, she is not political. She is not interested in reforming the process. Her voice is unabashedly and explicitly moral — “How dare you.”

“I think she is extraordinary in her determination,” says Eva Jones, an American high school senior who recently spent a week protesting for climate justice in Davos. “When you hear her speak, she doesn’t do vanity interviews. It’s never like, ‘So what do your friends think about this?’ She’s like, ‘No, I don’t want to talk about my friends, I want to talk about the crisis.’ She’s absolutely insane about getting reporters and getting politicians and getting whoever’s talking to her back to the subject.”

All of this from a teenager who sometimes still wears her hair in pigtails.

Thunberg and her fellow protesters head toward Medborgarplatsen (Citizen Square), in central Stockholm. They pass over a bridge by the harbor, where massive renovations are being done so the city can host even more waste-multiplying mega cruise ships. The kids chant in Swedish, “What do we want? Climate justice! When? Now! When? Now, now, now!” At the square, the squirrelly tweens play tag and are entertained by a rapper in a ski mask (some things don’t translate).

Eventually, Greta takes the stage. She speaks in her native Swedish, and her tone is faster and more emotional than in English. She mentions that temperatures in Sweden have been 5 to 10 degrees Celsius above normal this winter, and how globally 19 of the past 20 years have been the warmest on record.

“I have been on the road and visited numerous places and met people from all over the globe,” says Greta. “I can say that it looks nearly the same everywhere I have been: The climate crisis is ignored by people in charge, despite the science being crystal clear. We don’t want to hear one more politician say that this is important but afterward do nothing to change it. We don’t want more empty words from people pretending to take our future seriously.”

She pauses, and her face goes grim. “It shouldn’t be up to us children and teenagers to make people wake up around the world. The ones in charge should be ashamed.”

The crowd chants, “Greta, Greta, Greta.…”

She must hate that.

Greta keeps moving. In January, it was Davos. This week it is Stockholm. Next Friday is Hamburg. It’s a debilitating schedule since she doesn’t fly. Greta says it won’t go on forever. And she’s right. Within a few weeks, the world would shut down for the coronavirus, with Greta and her father both falling ill (neither of them was tested for the virus, but she said she thought it was “extremely likely” that they had it, given her schedule). Besides, she is nearing the end of her gap year, between high school and university. “I really hope that we can solve this thing now because I want to get back to studying,” says Thunberg, shivering a bit in the Stockholm wind. I can’t tell if she is joking or is having a rare moment of optimism.

Still, she is so small, and the world is so big. I wonder how she continues forward as the world pays lip service and not much else.

For the first time, Thunberg softens.

“I’m very weak in a sense,” says Thunberg quietly. “I’m very tiny and I am very emotional, and that is not something people usually associate with strength. I think weakness, in a way, can be also needed because we don’t have to be the loudest, we don’t have to take up the most amount of space, and we don’t have to earn the most money.”

A friend comes over and whispers in her ear. It’s time to go, maybe home for a silent walk with her two dogs, Moses and Roxy. But she isn’t quite finished.

“We don’t need to have the biggest car, and we don’t need to get the most attention. We just need to…”

Mighty Greta’s voice trails off as if she is lost in thought or searching for the right word in English. Then, she looks up, locks eyes, and smiles for the first time.

“We need to care about each other more.”

Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Eat This, Meat Loaf: Greta Thunberg Serves Up Facts To Rocker's 'Brainwashed' Slam

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg responded Monday to American rocker Meat Loaf’s condescending suggestion last week that the Swedish teen has been brainwashed into believing there’s an environmental crisis.
Thunberg, 17, declared that the issue of climate change comes down to “scientific facts” — not brainwashing.
“It’s not about Meatloaf. It’s not about me. It’s not about what some people call me. It’s not about left or right,” she tweeted. “It’s all about scientific facts. And that we’re not aware of the situation.”
She linked to an infographic from the United Nations Environment Programme’s emissions gap report, which indicated the globe may be close to a tipping point.
In a Daily Mail interview published Jan. 1, Meat Loaf, whose real name is Marvin Lee Aday, noted that he simply does not believe in climate change. Thunberg “has been brainwashed into thinking that there is climate change, and there isn’t,” said the 72-year-old singer. “She hasn’t done anything wrong, but she’s been forced into thinking that what she is saying is true.”
Thunberg, who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019, is helping to inspire a global environmental movement ― and has become a lightning rod for attacks. 
President Donald Trump mocked Thunberg in response to her Time honor, telling her: “Chill Greta, Chill!” 
Meat Loaf didn’t immediately respond to Thunberg’s takedown, but plenty of other people on Twitter did.
Meat Loaf didn’t immediately respond to Thunberg’s takedown, but plenty of other people on Twitter did.

Monday, March 02, 2020

BRISTOL POST OUTS MEN THREATENING GRETA THUNBERG!

The abuse and threats made to Greta Thunberg by people (MEN) from Bristol

By grown men, many who appear to have children of their o
wn


When teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg announced she would be coming to Bristol more than a week ago, it created a huge buzz in the city.

Tens of thousands of people turned out to hear her speak on College Green and join a march around the city centre calling for greater action from governments and corporations around the world to do more to tackle rising global temperatures.

Bristol Live, the BBC and a host of other media devoted pages and pages on their websites to cover the preparations for this event - with everything from practical information about roads closing and timetables of the day to more in-depth articles about why the event is happening.

Every time articles by Bristol Live and other media organisations were posted on social media - particularly Facebook - they attracted hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments.

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It didn’t matter whether the articles or information posts were placed onto community Facebook pages or the media’s own Facebook pages, they attracted comments by their bucketload.

And, the vast majority of these were from people who were not happy the monthly School Strike for Climate event on College Green would be bigger than usual.

The thousands of negative comments were on familiar themes - questioning the validity of climate science, questioning the rights of children to go ‘on strike’ from school, questioning young people’s use of technology, transport and general carbon footprint and complaining about the disruption of the city centre’s roads being closed.

(Image: Bristol Post)

But most of the more furious ire was reserved for Greta Thunberg herself. Many other articles in other media have examined why a slight, tiny 17-year-old schoolgirl from Sweden triggers such anger and hatred from, mainly older people, but the kind of fury that follows the campaigner around the world arrived in Bristol with a vengeance.

READ MORE
Greta Thunberg In Bristol


Visit in pictures

Most of that abuse was just that - abuse, sharing unkind memes about her, calling her a ‘puppet’, questioning her own actions travelling the world, or just calling her names.

These comments came in their thousands, day and night, filling Facebook pages and groups - faster in greater volume than anyone moderating those pages or groups, or Facebook itself, could hide or delete.

But some people went even further - further than just abusing Greta Thunberg and the young people taking part in the school strike.

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How does Greta Thunberg travel? The car she got in after arriving in Bristol on GWR train

The extra step they took was to appear to call for, encourage or incite people to take physical action against either Greta Thunberg or those taking part.

The people who were appearing to make those suggestions of physical actions and violence were very often parents and grandparents themselves. Some had even called for people on social media to ‘be kind’ following the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack.

The following is a fraction of the apparent calls for violence or violent intent against Greta Thunberg or the school strikers, and those apparent calls for violence or violent intent are a fraction of the general, non-violent but not kind statements made.
Kev Bennett

Kev Bennett called for Greta Thunberg to be 'Ms Trunchbulled'

Kev Bennett's contribution to the news of the arrival of Greta Thunberg was to appear to ask for someone to physically assault her.

"Can someone grab her pigtails and ms trunchable her over the fence," he wrote.

When questioned by other Facebook users on the thread, Kev Bennett said she was 'not a young child' and 'also a product of Antifa parents'.

Kev Bennett called for Greta Thunberg to be thrown over a fence

Kev is referring to the character Miss Trunchbull from the Roald Dahl story Matilda, who brutally assaults the children in her class.
Stevie Ralph-Taylor

Stevie Ralph-Taylor's Facebook profile

Commenting under a Facebook post outlining the route of the march about climate change in Bristol, Stevie Ralph-Taylor said of Greta Thunberg 'She should be burnt at the stake!'.

Stevie Ralph-Taylor called for Greta Thunberg to be burnt at the stake
Max Poncho Morgan

Max Poncho Morgan

Max Poncho Morgan responded to a Facebook post about the School Strike for Climate by saying: 'milkshakes at the ready'.

While this remark is open to interpretation, it could well refer to the practice of throwing milkshakes over political figures, which emerged in the General Election campaign last year.

Max Poncho Morgan's Facebook comment about Greta Thunberg and young people's climate change campaign

Max recently changed his Facebook profile to include a 'Be Kind' filter - a phrase of advice much-used following the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack.
Kevin Bird

Kevin Bird's Facebook profile picture

As the event drew closer this week, the police and Bristol City Council issued safety advice.

Both the authorities said they were concerned the sheer size of the crowd could cause problems - and one of the phrases used by the police and the council was there could be the potential for crushes in the crowd - a common sense warning.


Kevin Bird, pictured above, read this council warning and responded on Facebook: "Crush the b***h. Sounds good to me. Send her home"


Ash Ashfaq (and Spencer Trump)

Ash Ashfaq's Facebook picture

In a thread on Facebook in which the changes to the bus routes and road closures was discussed, Ash Ashfaq called for Greta Thunberg's parents to physically assault her.

The father of young children wrote: "Her parents need to slap her with a brick."

Under this, another man, Spencer Trump, commented: "Send her back the way she should be in flat pack as that's what Sweden is famous for."


Ash Afhaq and Spencer Trump commenting on Greta Thunberg coming to Bristol
Anthony Hoskins

Anthony Hoskins' Facebook profile

As the week leading up to the School Strike for Climate continued, it became clear tens of thousands of people would be attending.

Anthony Hoskins' response was to claim if he could, he would deploy water cannon - something which is illegal even for the police to use in Britain - on the children attending the rally on College Green.



The comment said: "If i had a chance i would borrow a fire engine on friday and spray the lot of the morons with water cannon, the people are turning on these morons, read all the comments on here" [sic]

Wednesday, September 09, 2020

 

'I Am Greta' Director Nathan Grossman on Greta Thunberg's Extraordinary Year

I Am Greta with inset of director Nathan Grossman
Courtesy of Tiff; ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images

The documentary follows the teenage climate change activist from her school strikes in Sweden to being named Time's Person of the Year in 2019.

Nathan Grossman had no idea what he was in for.

Back in August 2018, the Swedish documentarian heard from a friend about a teenager who had decided to stage a protest — a "school strike" — in front of the Swedish Parliament, demanding action on climate change.

"I thought it would be a three-week shoot," he recalls, "that this teenage girl, this Greta Thunberg, would be a story of a few minutes in a short, arty film about child activists."

The job turned into a full year of shooting, with Grossman struggling to keep up with Greta, as this shy, 15-year-old student with Asperger's became the global face of the climate change movement. Grossman's documentary, I Am Greta, is with her every step of the way, from that first day on the parliament steps with her homemade sign — Skolstrejk fรถr klimatet (school strike for climate) — to her meetings with world leaders, addressing the U.N., and becoming, in 2019, Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Along the way, Grossman also depicts a rarely-seen side of the activist, how the teenage girl from Sweden deals with the stress of nonstop travel, constant public scrutiny, and the growing online vitriol of right-wing pundits. 

Grossman spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 4, about his amazing year with Greta, what the press has gotten wrong about the teen activist and why he thinks, despite it knocking climate change off the media agenda, the coronavirus pandemic could revitalize the environmentalist movement.

How did you first come in contact with Greta Thunberg? 

I have a friend who's a screenwriter, and he wrote to me that he knew about this school kid interested in climate change, this Greta Thunberg, who was going to stage a school strike in front of the Parliament buildings in Stockholm. It seemed interesting. I'm an environmentalist filmmaker, and I was interested in how children were reacting to the issue. On that first August morning when we started filming, I connected very quickly with Greta. We had the same take on the issues, and I was very impressed, from the beginning, by how very straightforward she was, how she was able to directly formulate and express the problems.

Did you have any idea that little school protest would turn into a global movement? 

Never. I thought it would be a three-week shoot. And that this teenage girl, this Greta Thunberg, would be a story of a few minutes in a short, arty film about child activists. She'd be one of many characters, many different child activists. If you look at the beginning of the film, you can see how we shot it, using tripods, very artsy-style, lots of headroom, static framing. Then suddenly things took off and we were in a meeting with Greta and Emmanuel Macron. 

How did your perspective on Greta change during the course of the shooting?

When I first started shooting, she was very shy — it's hard to express because a lot of how she is comes from her diagnosis, from Asperger's. She is very specific about what she wants to talk about and what she doesn't want to talk about. Initially, our conversations were very focused on environmental issues, the topics we had in common. The rest she didn't want to discuss. But as we started to get to know each other — and she got older too — she started to open up. I think you can see that in the film. 

How do you think she changed in the course of that incredible year? 

I don't think she changed her ideals. She still remains true to her ideas and her cause. But from very early on I wanted to get into her inner monolog, to understand how she sees the world. That's the perspective film has, and that perspective changes as she changes. The year wasn't just about positive hype. It was a very tough year, very heavy and very frustrating for Greta. We see how the world may be ready to hear her message but it is not ready to act on her message. It shows the frustration and pain that has been part of this year for her.

What do you think the media has gotten wrong about Greta Thunberg?

I think maybe you have gotten wrong how she's not in this for the fame, she was never in this to become Time Person of the Year. She's deeply worried about this issue of climate change. I think the media had trouble framing this kind of obsessive activism. It was hard to explain to readers sometimes. That's where I think film is better, because it gives so many dimensions. 

Once when we were shooting I asked Greta if there was anything she was worried about regarding the film, and she said "I'm a bit worried that I won't recognize myself in it." She felt sometimes she didn't recognize herself in the stories about her, that showed her as a one-dimensional icon. So I was so happy when I showed her the movie, and she said she recognized herself, that she recognized that year in her life. 

We get a glimpse of her family life in your movie, in particular her relationship with her father, which I found very touching. 

Her family's support has always been very important to her. Greta has always been very open and frank about the fact that she comes from a privileged family and that, of course, it is much easier if you come from that background to be able to make the sacrifices she talks about. But I think it's been important too, it has meant she has not been funded by anyone, she paid her own train tickets, paid her own way. On the other hand, this conspiracy theory that it's her family that's been orchestrating her, telling her what to do, the film shows how ridiculous this is. I didn't intend this at the start, but her father is almost a figure of comic relief in the film. I shot this movie from Greta's perspective — I didn't do any interviews with her father, and he doesn't get a voice-over — and from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl, your father can be a bit of a joke. But I hope that's one part of the movie that everyone can recognize in themselves: that relationship of being a teen and having a father, of wanting to do your own thing but still needing your parents.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed the issue of climate change off the public agenda. Do you fear this film is coming out too late? 

Actually, I think the experience of this pandemic could help the climate change movement. Greta is taking the pandemic seriously. She listens to the scientists and knows we need to have medical expertise to fight this pandemic. But for a lot of people in the climate movement, the reaction to this crisis, where suddenly billions in funding came from everywhere, compared to the climate issue [which has been] been on the agenda for 40-50 years and the answer was always: "we don't have the funds – let's take another meeting," it just seems hypocritical. I think people will remember this. There will be a day when this pandemic will be over and our response will show the young people that the world had the ability to act. That when we wanted to, we had the billions to spend. And if we want to, we can spend them now on the climate. 

The film ends on a bittersweet note. Greta helped spark this movement, but we are still a long way from her goal. 

Whenever you see progress, it is bittersweet. You are happy you have come this far but there's this bitterness about how much further you need to go. The end of the movie shows that doubleness as well. What Greta has created is, in itself, not enough. It's not enough to have people marching in the streets. I think she feels she has made an impact but, not just for her but for the entire young generation, that is not enough. Every month, every year that passes without radical change, it gets worse. There is more CO2 in the air, it becomes harder for us to change course. 

What do you hope audiences take from I Am Greta?

My main goal of the movie is to get people to see the world from the perspective of Greta Thunberg. She's maybe 4 feet, 11 inches tall. I'm closer to 6 foot 3. But I scrunched down to get that perspective, to shoot the world the way she sees it. I hope people come away from the film with a deeper understanding of her as a person. And that it maybe will say to people who are a little bit different, that we need you guys, not just to speak out on climate change but on all of the aspects of this hypocritical world. If Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was Climate Change 1.0, just getting people to realize that climate change exists, maybe this movie can be Climate Change 2.0., the one to get people to start taking action. We have to start listening to this little girl, Greta. And we should be as scared as she is.

I Am Greta premieres in the U.S. on Hulu on Nov. 13.

Friday, December 30, 2022

Romania urged to act on traffickers by GRETA in 2021

The GRETA report notes that Romania remains predominantly a country of origin of victims of trafficking in human beings
















Sravasti Dasgupta

A rights group called GRETA (Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings) had called attention to the crime in Romania last year, even as far-right influencer Andrew Tate was detained by authorities in the country on Thursday.

In a press release in June 2021, GRETA had urged Romania to ensure that human trafficking offences lead to effective and dissuasive sanctions and that victims of trafficking have access to compensation.

The report also noted that Romania remains predominantly a country of origin of victims of trafficking in human beings

The year-old press release by the group has resurfaced after Mr Tate locked horns with climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter.

Earlier this week, Mr Tate tagged Ms Thunberg in a post bragging about the carbon emissions of his various sports cars.

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Divisive social media star Andrew Tate detained in Romania
Andrew Tate detained in Romania over human trafficking and rape investigation

“I have 33 cars,” he began, before listing the specifications for his Bugatti and Ferraris.

“This is just the start,” he continued. “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”

Ms Thunberg replied: “Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalld***energy@getalife.com.”

He then shared his response in a video in which a two-minute clip has him speaking, wearing a robe and holding a cigar.

At one point, he is seen collecting two pizza boxes from someone and placing them on the table.

Subsequently, authorities in Romania used Mr Tate’s social media post in which he ridiculed Romanian pizza chain, Jerry’s Pizza, to confirm he was in the country.

The pizza boxes, it seems, helped authorities track him down.

Civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, sharing a screenshot of Mr Tate’s video from the day before and tweeted: “Romanian authorities needed proof that Andrew Tate was in the country so they reportedly used his social media posts.”

The coincidence of the GRETA group release from last year and the exchange between Ms Thunberg and Mr Tate that led to authorities finding him was also highlighted by Ms Caraballo in another post.

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Mr Tate, a former kick boxer gained a large following of men online, and has been banned from various social media sites, for his aggressive and oftentimes misogynistic views. In 2016, he was booted out from the reality TV show Big Brother, after a video emerged of him hitting a woman with a belt.

Greta Thunberg roasts Andrew Tate after failed social media callout


Bragging about the ‘enormous emissions’ of his vehicles, the social media dud took to Twitter to boast of his 33 cars - including a Bugatti - offering to send the climate campaigner the complete list if she gave him her email address

Greta Thunberg

Denise Smith
December 28 2022 

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg has delivered a roundhouse kick to Andrew Tate after calling him out for his 'small d*** energy'.

The former kickboxer who was recently banned from YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok over his ‘depraved’ and 'toxic' comments against women, was left with egg on his face after he attempted to troll the 19-year-old by listing off his expansive car collection.

Bragging about the "enormous emissions" of his vehicles, the social media dud took to Twitter to boast of his 33 cars - including a Bugatti - offering to send Greta the complete list if she gave him her email address.

In true Greta style, the eco-warrior took little time in delivering a brutal comeback, offering up her email address of "smalld***energy@getalife.com".


Andrew Tate

Tate wrote: "Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions."

He then shared a flashy video compilation of him driving several high-end cars and boarding private jets which played out to Greta's famous speech at the United Nations in 2019.

Greta replied with a short and sweet message.

"Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalld**kenergy@getalife.com," she wrote.


Fans of the climate activist rushed to support her on Twitter calling her ‘inspirational’, while another user wrote: “I did not see ‘Greta burns Tate’ on my bingo card.”

Tate rejoined the Twitter in November after Elon Musk took over the company and announced a new policy that promotes “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”.