Personal look at face of climate activism
Greta Thunberg, the 17yearold Swedish climate activist, is super serious, but she is developing a sharp sense of humor, as witnessed by her trolling of President Trump’s allegations of voter fraud by tweeting he should “chill” about the election.
That was one she sat on for 11 months after Trump, the climate denier in chief, blasted Thunberg being named Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year.
The surprising thing about “I Am Greta,” the new Hulu documentary about the teen, is that it isn’t much about climate activism at all. It is instead a fascinating and nuanced portrait of an intelligent but enigmatic child on the spectrum who improbably became a symbol of a worldwide movement in just a few short months.
Yes, there are rallies and marches. Greta meets the pope, French President Emmanuel Macron and California’s former governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. She smiles and laughs as she plays clips on her phone of rightwing attacks by the usual climatedenier suspects like Trump, Fox News and Piers Morgan.
But the core of the documentary, directed by Nathan Grossman, is Greta herself — she “narrates” the film from her daily diary entries. She shares her quiet moments at home in Stockholm with her dogs, she talks about her love of riding horses, and we learn about her close and loving relationship with her parents, Svante and Malena, who probably recorded a lot of the film’s behindthescenes moments.
It is widely known that Greta was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which hinders her social interaction. Her father describes a period of her youth when she suffered from “selective mutism” and for three years would interact only with her parents and dogs.
It is around this time that she learned about climate change and its likely effects on the planet and became alarmed. One day, in August 2018, the then15yearold took a handmade sign and plopped down outside Sweden’s parliament and went on a “school strike” for climate activism.
She was alone, day after day, until she was joined by other young people in support. It became a local media event, then an international one. Just as George Floyd’s killing while in police custody in Minneapolis in May reinvigorated a Black Lives Matter movement that already existed, Greta’s lonely example of a powerless teenager figuratively shouting into the wind became a worldwide call to action to climate activists.
In a few months, she was speaking as the star attraction at rallies across Europe. And her worried parents just kind of had to go with it.
The film climaxes with her sailing ( she refuses to fly because of the greenhouse gas emissions from aviation) to New York to speak at the U. N. Climate Action Summit.
One aspect of Asperger’s is that Greta is so laserfocused on her mission, she forgets to eat. Her father is constantly worried — “Greta, you are tired,” he says repeatedly — and at one point he stops her from marching with organizers of a rally and demands that she eat. “We’ll catch up,” he says. After an argument, Greta angrily sits on a bench and munches on a banana.
But “I Am Greta” does show why she is a powerful voice. The key to her appeal is her honesty and her “innocence,” or as some would say, naivete. She has an undeniable charisma that is rare among public figures: She is authentic. She is willing to tell politicians to their face, “You have failed us. ... You have stolen our future.”
Greta has been criticized for overrating the power of politicians — especially democratically elected ones who have to serve a diverse constituency — and oversimplifying the enormous logistical challenge of becoming a green planet. And it’s true that her activism is more about message than policy specifics.
But outside of the deluded, who doesn’t believe that climate change is real and needs to be addressed in an urgent manner? “I Am Greta” demonstrates that her message is resonating.