If you don’t know who Greta Thunberg is, you can Google 15,800,000 results for her. She is a Swedish school girl born in 2003 who is a leader in naming the Climate Crisis for what it is and getting people to listen. She has made many presentations including a TED talk. She has spoken in Brussels, at Davos, before the UK parliament and has been invited to the UN Climate Action Summit this Fall.

She has a singular focus. She is not constrained by social niceities. 

Four years ago, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s.

“I overthink. Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad. I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.” 

She has come to accept this as part of who she is – and made it a motivating force instead of a source of paralysing depression, which it once was. Jonathan Watts The Guardian

Greta does not want us to waste time speaking of hope. She wants us to panic and to treat our response to the Climate Crisis as if our house is on fire. She is worth listening to. She is also worth emulating.