‘We stopped flying to save our Greta, not the planet’
THE parents of Greta Thunberg, the climate change activist, stopped flying and went vegan to “save” their daughter rather than the planet, her father has said as the schoolgirl described her campaigning as “medicine” for her depression.
Svante Thunberg said he and his wife were “not climate activists” but had made radical changes to their lifestyles after seeing the positive impact it had on their daughter’s mental health.
However, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, the 50-yearold father said he initially thought it was a “bad idea” when his then 15-yearold daughter put herself on the “front line” of the climate change battle, and he now worries she attracts “hate”.
His remarks were made in an interview commissioned by Greta, who turns 17 on Friday, when she became the youngest person to guest edit the flagship BBC programme.
The 16-year-old was also praised on air by Sir David Attenborough, who said she had achieved what he had failed to do and “aroused the world” to the climate crisis.
The teenage activist’s rapid ascent to global prominence began last year when she led a series of school strikes against climate change in her native Sweden. Since then she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in September delivered an emotive address to world leaders at the UN.
This month, Time magazine named Greta its person of the year, noting she had “addressed heads of state at the UN, met with the Pope, sparred with the president of the United States and inspired four million people to join the climate strike”.
Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Thunberg said the teenager became severely depressed after being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when she was 12, and stopped talking, eating or going to school for a year.
But he said the family started to notice an improvement in her condition as she became more interested in climate issues. As a result, his wife, opera singer Malena Ernman, stopped flying as she witnessed the impact her commitment made on their daughter.
Mr Thunberg, who also has another daughter, 14-year-old Beata, said: “To be honest, she didn’t do it to save the climate she did it to save her child because she saw how much it meant to her. So then we thought ‘wow’ and then I became vegan, and she got more and more energy from these things.”
He added: “We are not climate activists, we never were.”
Mr Thunberg said that despite the happiness Greta’s activism brought her, he was also concerned about the “hate” she was attracting: “I worry about the fake news, all the things people try to fabricate about her, the hate that that generates.”
In a separate interview, Greta said her activism helped her depression. “A medicine is to become active,” she said.
She also conducted a Skype interview with Sir David Attenborough, whose documentaries she credited with first galvanising her interest in environmental issues as a child.
The veteran broadcaster said he was “flattered” by the compliment and added: “She has achieved things that many of us who have been working on this for 20 years have failed to achieve … you have aroused the world.”
‘I worry about the fake news, all the things people try to fabricate about her, the hate that that generates’