Plan to get Greta back to ‘normal’

JI’VE been waiting to write about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish sweet-faced sprite who’s become the symbol of the green movement, for ages, but worried about getting the tone right.With social media so nasty right now (see Richard, opposite) woe betide anyone who has the temerity to gently question the climate change panic that Greta represents.

But now this angry child (who celebrated her 17th birthday yesterday) has been tenderly explained to us by her father, Svante. I had often wondered about Greta’s parents; had they, as critics railed, encouraged her to become worldfamous with her message of despair? Had they, as a Swedish right-wing politician has claimed, pushed their daughter in a “staged PR campaign” to promote her opera-singer mother’s book?

These, like President Trump’s graceless suggestion that Greta seek anger management, are ignoble thoughts. But knowing nothing about her home life, those questions were bound to be asked.

Now her 50-year-old father has spoken so eloquently and protectively about his girl that all those doubts must be quashed.To the BBC’s Mishal Husain he explained how worried he and

Rhis wife had been about Greta. When he accompanied her to UN climate summits in New York and Madrid, he did it not to “save the climate” but “to save my child”. Greta had suffered from severe depression for three or four years before she began to organise her school climate strikes (which her parents discouraged). “She stopped talking… she stopped going to school,” said Svante, adding that it was the “ultimate nightmare for a parent” when she began refusing to eat. One of the reasons for Greta’s depression was her diagnosis of Asperger’s when she was 12. Her father says of the family: “We are not climate activists, we never were.” Like countless parents before them, they were simply desperate to help their daughter.

And how astonishingly this diminutive Joan of Arc succeeded. Nevertheless, if I were her mother I’d be proud of her and yet very worried.And her father is anxious about her global exposure, saying he worries about the “hate that she generates”. He continues: “I have two daughters, and to be honest, they are all that matters to me. I just want them to be happy.”

Greta now claims that she wants nothing more than to be “normal” again.

Parents all over the planet will say amen to that.