Greta Thunberg: Who is the climate activist and what has she achieved?
Greta Thunberg is one of the world's best-known climate change campaigners. The 21-year-old from Sweden is due to go on trial at a magistrates court in London on 1 February, following her arrest at an environmental protest in October 2023. Ms Thunberg was born in the Swedish capital Stockholm in 2003. Her mother Malena Ernman is an opera singer, and her father Svante Thunberg is an actor. She first learned about climate change when she was eight. When she was 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. In summer 2018, aged 15, Ms Thunberg held the first "School Strike for Climate" outside the Swedish parliament. The protest was widely covered, and hundreds of thousands of young people across the world joined her Fridays For Future strikes . Mr Thunberg says his daughter became "much happier" after she started campaigning. She has described her autism diagnosis as a "superpower" which 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." Between 2019 and 2020, she took a year out of school to concentrate on activism, and became famous for her impassioned speeches to world leaders. She left school in summer 2023, and ended her school climate strikes . In April 2019, aged 16, Ms 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." This video can not be played WATCH: Greta gives a passionate speech to world leaders Speaking at a youth protest in Glasgow in 2021, after the city hosted 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?" On 17 October, Ms Thunberg was arrested along with four other people at a demonstration near a hotel in central London where an energy conference was taking place. She is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 1 February, accused of a public order offence , which she denies. In 2023, she was twice arrested at the port of Malmo in Sweden while blocking a road used for transporting oil. In July of that year, a court fined her 2,500 krona ($240; 187) and in October, she was fined 2,250 krona ($206; 168) . Ms 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 and activists about how to combat the climate crisis. At the start of 2023, controversial media personality Andrew Tate baited Ms 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 subsequently deleted. 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". Although Ms 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." US and UK launch strikes on Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen How Imran Khan plans to win an election from jail Iran says Syria and Iraq strikes are 'strategic mistake' Pakistan's king of comebacks looks set to win again Can Musk's Neuralink brain chip really change the world? Did bodybuilding bring on my early perimenopause? 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