Greta Thunberg Fast Facts
Birth date: January 3, 2003
Birth place: Stockholm, Sweden
Birth name: Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg
Father: Svante Thunberg, actor
Mother: Malena Ernman, opera singer
Her name is pronounced grAY-tah tOOn-bairk.
Has spoken openly about living with Asperger's, referring to the diagnosis as a 'superpower' that helps her activism.
Has said she was inspired by the school walkouts in the United States that followed the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019, the youngest individual to be recognized.
Has a species of beetle named after her: 'Nelloptodes gretae.'
Thunberg's published books include: 'No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference,' 'The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions' and 'Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis.'
August 2018 - Thunberg starts skipping school to stage sit-ins outside Sweden's parliament, holding a sign stating 'Skolstrejk för klimatet' (School Strike for Climate). Soon, others join and the group decides to continue their strike, forming the Fridays for Future (FFF) movement.
December 2018 - Thunberg gives a speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Poland, telling negotiators, 'You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet.'
January 24, 2019 - Thunberg gives an impromptu speech to delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
April 17, 2019 - Meets with Pope Francis after his weekly audience at the Vatican.
August 28, 2019 - Arrives in New York to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in September after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for 15 days on a zero-emissions sailboat to reduce the environmental impact of her journey.
September 16, 2019 - Thunberg meets with former US President Barack Obama in Washington, DC.
September 18, 2019 - Thunberg appears in front of the US Congress before a hearing on climate change. Instead of prepared remarks, she refers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on global warming, which reported a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
September 20, 2019 - Thunberg speaks at a climate strike in New York, part of a global climate strike organized by Thunberg and other school students. According to Thunberg, 4,638 events are scheduled to take place in 139 countries from September 20-27.
September 23, 2019 - Thunberg speaks at the UN Climate Action Summit. 'We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,' Thunberg tells the UN General Assembly. 'How dare you?' Later that day, Thunberg and 15 other children file a complaint with the UN alleging that five of the world's major economies have violated their human rights by not taking adequate action to stop the unfolding climate crisis.
December 3, 2019 - Thunberg arrives in Lisbon, Portugal, for the 25th UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Spain, after nearly three weeks travelling across the Atlantic Ocean on a boat using solar panels and hydro-generators for electricity.
December 6, 2019 - Thunberg criticizes world leaders gathered for the COP25 conference in Madrid for not doing enough to stop the ecological crisis.
January 29, 2020 - In an Instagram post, announces she is applying for a trademark for her name and the Fridays for Future climate crisis movement she created. By filing for a trademark, something she says she had no prior interest in doing, she intends to protect her movement and its activities.
February 25, 2020 - Thunberg meets Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai at the University of Oxford.
November 13, 2020 - The documentary 'I Am Greta' premieres on Hulu.
September 28, 2021 - Thunberg speaks at the Youth4Climate forum in Milan, Italy, imitating world leaders by repeating their commonly used expressions on the climate crisis, shooting them down as empty words and unfulfilled promises.
November 5, 2021 - Leading a youth protest outside the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Thunberg criticizes world leaders and calls the summit a 'failure.'
January 17, 2023 - Thunberg is detained by German police at a protest over the expansion of a coal mine in the west German village of Lützerath. She is released later that evening. A police spokesperson tells CNN this is the second time Thunberg had been detained at the site.
March 1, 2023 - According to a spokesperson for the Oslo police district, 10 people including Thunberg were removed by police from the entrance of Norway's ministry of finance. Demonstrators blocked access to Norwegian government buildings to protest two windfarms built on Sámi reindeer grazing grounds.
July 24, 2023 - A Swedish court fines Thunberg after finding her guilty of disobeying law enforcement, a Malmö City Court spokesperson tells CNN. Thunberg was charged with 'the crime of disobedience to law and order' earlier in July after participating in a protest on June 19 which blocked oil tankers in part of Malmö harbor. Thunberg is fined a total of 2,500 Swedish krona (about $240).
October 17, 2023 - Thunberg is arrested at a protest outside the Energy Intelligence Forum, an annual summit that gathers chief executives from oil and gas companies and later charged with a public order offense. She is acquitted on February 2, 2024.
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'We're going to swamp the city. If we can't arrest them in jail, we'll go out to the communities.' The next day, Trump posted an image of a fleet of airplanes lifting off from the tarmac. 'Let the deportations begin!' On June 7, Miller shared a video on X of a Customs and Border Protection agent, wearing a gas mask, trying to steer a vehicle away from an anti-ICE protest in Paramount as protesters smashed it with rocks. 'This is a violent insurrection,' Miller said. The word choice was ominous. The nation's military cannot legally make arrests within the U.S. unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act — a step Trump had previously threatened but stopped short of taking. As the unrest persisted, Trump administration officials' rhetoric became increasingly stark. Trump portrayed the city as a 'trash heap.' The Department of Homeland Security put out a news release stating it had captured the 'worst of the worst Illegal Alien Criminals in Los Angeles.' (The White House would later clarify that two-thirds of those arrested by ICE over the last week had no criminal records.) Even as Trump officials focused their public narrative on violent, undocumented offenders, they made clear that anyone who had entered illegally had broken the law and is subject to deportation. Anyone who identified with a foreign country was deemed suspicious. 'Look at all the foreign flags,' Miller said on X as he shared a video of a crowd of protesters, some waving Mexican flags. 'Los Angeles is occupied territory.' And just as they blurred boundaries between law-abiding immigrants and those with criminal histories, they cast all protesters as criminals, rioters and insurrectionists. 'Deport the invaders, or surrender to insurrection,' Miller said as the administration deployed National Guard troops to the city. Trump vowed to restore order. 'The Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free,' he said in a Truth Social post. Soon, he would mobilize a convoy of Marines to join the National Guard — both deployed against the will of local officials. Such an action hadn't been taken in more than half a century. California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a federal lawsuit against Trump, calling his mobilization of the state's National Guard a 'brazen abuse of power.' Critics of the immigration crackdown in Los Angeles and subsequent military deployment called it 'a public relations operation' that was directed only at those who already support Trump. 'It provides sort of cheap fuel to keep his base,' said Efrén Pérez, professor of political science and psychology at UCLA. 'Angelenos, he said, 'are the quintessential persona non grata for Trump and his followers.' On June 9 — the day Homeland Security announced 700 active-duty Marines were headed to L.A. — Trump issued an extraordinary statement. 'The Insurrectionists have a tendency to spit in the face of the National Guardsmen/women, and others,' Trump said on Truth Social. 'These Patriots are told to accept this, it's just the way life runs. But not in the Trump Administration. IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT.' The continued clashes, amplified by sparring on X between Trump and California officials, left many Angelenos angered, frightened and confused. 'We do not know where and when the next raids in the city will be,' Bass told CNN: 'That is the concern, because people in the city have a Rapid Response Network: if they see ICE they go out, they protest. It's just a recipe for pandemonium that is completely unnecessary.' Although U.S. Northern Command reiterated that the federal troops in L.A. could not make arrests, Trump's previous threats — combined with the departure from usual practice — made many anxious. 'What is their mission? What are they doing?' Shawn Parry-Giles, the director of the Rosenker Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership at the University of Maryland, said of the federal troops. 'It just seems chaotic all the way around, and the Trump administration is not doing a lot to alleviate that sense of chaos.' Gregory P. Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Trump's fostering of chaos was no accident. 'I think that in a political, tactical sense, the uncertainty serves Trump's interest,' he said. 'I think there are people in the administration who know, 'OK, if we really invoke the Insurrection Act that risks a different level of public backlash and disapproval.' But if it's just 'OK, I've sent in the troops, and who knows what I'm going to do with them,' I think that sort of measure of chaos serves the kind of political theater that the president is engaging.' Homan dismissed any idea that the Trump administration's policy was unclear or that immigration raids had sowed confusion among Angelenos. 'They shouldn't be confused,' he told The Times. 'We said from day one we're going to run the biggest deportation operation this country has seen. We will concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats, but everything I've ever said is that collateral arrests will be made.' As the rhetorical skirmishes and pile-ons continued, it became clearer that the deep-seated differences among local, state and federal officials left few paths for a resolution. Trump officials were set on mass deportations, claiming they had a public mandate after their election victory. Meanwhile, Los Angeles officials were set on resisting any cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, even if it focused on criminal offenders. On June 9, Bass called the very presence of ICE agents in the city a provocation: 'If immigration raids had not happened here, we would not have the disorder that went on.' 'Newsflash, Karen: There are immigration raids happening because Joe Biden allowed illegal alien criminals into Los Angeles, and you have dangerous sanctuary city policies that protect them,' Leavitt said on X. 'Since you and Governor Newsom refuse to maintain law and order — President Trump will.' But even as Newsom trolled Trump officials on X, he showed some signs of a possible middle ground. In a Thursday interview with the New York Times' 'The Daily' podcast, Newsom expressed 'deep empathy' for immigrants who had been living in California for decades and were contributing to society. But he also appeared to distance himself from L.A. County's approach of refusing to coordinate with federal immigration officials in any way. 'Get rid of the criminals, I have no problem with that,' he said. 'But do it civilly and do it responsibly.' Later, Newsom celebrated what appeared to be Trump backing off from some immigration enforcement efforts that targeted agriculture and hotel workers after industry leaders pushed back. 'MAJOR WIN: Trump just reversed course on immigration,' Newsom said on Instagram. 'This happened because you spoke up. Keep it going. Keep it peaceful. It's working.' But as thousands of demonstrators poured into Los Angeles on Saturday to protest Trump administration policies, federal officials remained steadfast that they will continue. 'All Governor Newsom has accomplished with his vile political attacks on ICE officers,' Miller said on X, 'is to increase their determination to uphold immigration law in the city of Los Angeles.' Times staff writer Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.
