32 new york | september 16–29, 2019
with stars and a short-sleeved, medium-blue T-shirt she’d later layer
with a sweatshirt of the same color and then a classic yellow raincoat.
She wore her hair in a long, single braid and, in a couple of nervous
moments, switched it from hanging over one shoulder to the other.
Occasionally, between conversational breaks, she returned to the
side of the room to collect her sign, held it for a moment, then set it
down again.
I started by making an obvious point, that she could surely not
have imagined what was to happen for her when she first began
striking. “Yeah, I know,” she said, looking down and seeming very
much like a teenager. “I think I was—and am—still in shock about
how fast it has been changing. Of course, the situation has not
become better, but it feels like people are standing up and under-
stand more the problem.” Back then, she said, “I just thought I will
try something new because nothing else seemed to be working in
the way that is required.”
“But where it’s led is incredible,” I said. “I mean, hundreds of
thousands of people all around the world—”
“Millions,” she interrupted.
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was some kind of invisible tipping
point that no one really could predict.”
She seemed genuinely surprised, still. She was sitting in the very
seat of imperial American influence, after a few weeks of travel docu-
mented (and criticized) in the biggest newspapers and on the most
widely watched news channels, outside the U.N., where in just a few
weeks she would speak before the General Assembly, the world’s
most powerful body, about what she saw as a global existential crisis,
a girl from Sweden who had been simply unable to square what she
understood about the state of climate science with how little she saw
being done in response and simply said so. “I mean, you can’t really
deny the science anymore,” she said. “So the dissonance builds up,
the difference between what people say and what people do, what
politicians say and what they do, and how the media frames the situ-
ation versus how the science frames the situation. I think people are
just, in a way, as I was in the beginning. Like, very ...” Here, she
paused and made a face, almost as if she were pantomiming a T. rex,
to suggest how frustrated she was to not be able to find the word in
English, her second language. “How do you ... It’s an easy word, I
can’t ...” Disappointed in herself, she settled on an unsatisfying alter-
native: “Surprised, or something like that.”
I asked whether she thought the public as a whole saw the crisis
more clearly than they did a year or two ago.
“Yes, I definitely think we in general see things more clearly now.
That has had several reasons. Both because people seem more wor-
ried about—I mean, floods and heat waves and weather events dur-
ing the last year. Just many small things adding up to each other.
The SR15 report and several U.N. reports and”—she gave a small
laugh at the bland repetitiveness of the language—“other reports.”
“If you let yourself be optimistic,” I said, “what are you hoping
unfolds?”
“If I’m optimistic, I can just see what has happened during the
last year—during the last month—and I could never dream that
something like this would happen. I think no one could have pre-
dicted it, either. And I think: There is the hope.”
Instead I asked what more change would look like. “If we imag-
ine a world in which the powerful are really focused
on addressing this at the scale that is necessary, what
kind of power structure would we be looking at?”
“I mean, that is not for me to say,” she said, “because
I am just an uneducated teenager. I can’t really speak
up about things like this; no one would take me seri-
ously. So I try not to speak about politics and that kind
of ... structure. I just think that we need to listen to the
scientists and the experts so they can say how best to
run the situation. I mean, I don’t know how things are going to look
like in even the near future. I don’t know how the situation is going
to look like in even a week from now because things can change. So
I think—that is both the scary part but also the hopeful, exciting
part, because things can change so quickly.”
I changed the topic to the logistics of the next few weeks. I knew
she would be heading to D.C. the following weekend to meet with
lawmakers, as she had in London and Brussels and Stockholm,
before returning to New York for the climate strike. Afterward, it
would be on to South America with a possible showdown in Brazil
with Bolsonaro along the way to Chile and the Santiago Climate
Change Conference.
“My ideal is that during the next month the awareness grows and
the information spreads so that people in general become aware of
these things. Because I think that once people are aware they will
come together and put pressure on people in power.”
“So ignorance is the main obstacle?” I asked.
“That has been my experience, that people don’t know about these
feedback loops or tipping points or carbon-dioxide budgets. I mean,
in general, if you walk out on the street and ask a person, ‘What is a
climate feedback loop?,’ they wouldn’t know how to answer that. So
I think that is one of the keys—to spread awareness. And to treat the
climate crisis as the crisis it is, because as it is now, we are just treat-
ing it like any other political issue, and that of course minimizes it to
a very small subject. We must see it for what it is.”
“And you think if people see it that way, that will lead inevitably
to some change in our policy?”
“That is what I hope,” she said cautiously. “Because I don’t think
people are evil. I just think we are unaware. And that it is due to these
surroundings, these circumstances around us, that make us con-
tinue like there’s no tomorrow and not care about anything.”
“But you’ve spoken in the past about the selfishness of the world’s
powerful, the world’s wealthy, people like us who live in the West,
relatively well off,” I said. “Do you think that is just ignorance? That
once people really understand the story we’ll become less selfish?”
“That is what I think and hope,” she said.
“Is there hope we can stay below 1.5 degrees?” I asked.
She paused to collect her thoughts and answer carefully. “I have
spoken to many scientists who have told me about the aspects not
included—what things the IPCC are not supposed to write about.
But I try to stay away from personal opinions. Current best avail-
able science says it is still possible within the laws of physics to do
it but not as it is now—not if we continue like we are doing now.”
I told her it must be so strange to be at the center of conversations
like that.
“It’s too much,” she said quietly. “In the beginning, it was like,
when someone recognized me on the street, I was like, Someone
recognized me on the street?” She smiled, then shook her head. “But
now ... it’s nice, of course, when people appreciate what you are
doing. But I think it’s a focus on me, as Greta”—and here, as she
pronounced her own name, I heard for the first time her native
speaking voice, the emphasis on the second syllable—“not as one
among many.”
This was not just a matter of fairness, she said. “I don’t like
being in the center. I don’t like being heard. I don’t like to be
always in the spotlight. I’d rather be in the back and not say any-
thing.” She paused. “But I can’t really complain,
because I’ve put myself in this situation and so much
is at stake.”
I wondered aloud if she would still be doing the
same kind of work in five years.
“I think that I will be doing ... something,” she said.
“I won’t be as interesting in people’s eyes, of course,
as I am now. That will fade away eventually. But I will
still try to do everything I can from where I am.” ■Visitnymag.comtoread
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