EP. 167 — Greta Thunberg

Jameela Oh, Jesus Christ on a bicycle. Greta Thunberg. Welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Greta Thank you. I’m good. How are you?

Jameela I’m great. I’m so happy to have you here. I have loved you for such a long time. And we have only ever communicated in these kind of tiny little nuggets online. And I’ve wanted to be able to sit down and chat to you for so long, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate.

Greta Likewise.

Jameela Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you making time. You have an absurd schedule and life. First of all, how have you been?

Greta That’s a difficult question to ask, but overall, it’s been good. It’s been quite intense. But I’m graduating now soon. So then school will be done at least. And then I will start uni probably. So that’s like personally, overall activism is always crazy and there are always hundreds of thousands of things to do. But we’re managing. How. How have you been doing?

Jameela I, I have similar kind of chaos and some very different ones all at the same time, but I completely understand what you’re saying. And yeah, I currently I’m in a good place. Thank you for asking, but. But sometimes it can get the better of me. And. And I wonder when I ask how you are like, how do you feel at the moment? Is that an awkward question to ask you?

Greta No, but it’s not a question that people often ask me. I. Activism fills my life with meaning, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something useful. But of course, there are ups and downs, especially when when you are fighting against something so much larger than you. Something that has so much more power than you. And even though, of course, we are many people on our side fighting against this. But of course it’s it can get quite tiresome sometimes. And people often say to us when they see us, Oh, thank you for for your work. Thank you for doing this. Um I feel so much hopeful now. And we’re like, Well, you shouldn’t be, because hope is something that you have to create yourself. If you’re relying on some almost burnt out teenagers for you to be hopeful, that doesn’t sound very sustainable. That doesn’t sound very hopeful to me.

Jameela Absolutely. And you talk about the fact that there are many of you who are fighting for climate justice. And then there is, I think, a smaller minority of people being very loud who actively fight against it, who don’t believe it, who engage in frequent gaslighting around the issue normally, because they’re living in countries that aren’t seeing the direct impacts of the climate crisis. But I think the masses, the the largest group are the people who are sort of, for whatever reason, valid or not, because they are distracted by the other crises that they’re going through in lives. They are just sort of complicit in their inactiveness. And I totally would count myself amongst those people. It took me such a long time to wake up to this conversation, and I think it was probably you who woke me up to it years ago. I think you caught the world’s attention. But those are the people that we most need to engage. And I believe that the book that you have brought out, the climate book, is specifically for those people, right. Just to arm them with the information with which they would have the power to actually enact meaningful change because they are the biggest group. They are we are the biggest group. We are the ones who actually will have the most impact. Correct?

Greta Yes, exactly. I think most people are on some level aware that something is happening. Something is wrong. They sometimes read headlines which sound quite alarming. They hear that some scientists are warning of of very large threats, but we can’t really. They can’t really grasp that and and and they don’t know what to do with it. That sort of concern. And I think that is the biggest group, the silent majority. And so I want to be a part of equipping those people with the information they need in order to to get the awareness and level of knowledge that they need that we need in order to demand actual change. And so, yes, that is exactly that is exactly the group we are mostly aiming our activism at, I think.

Jameela Yeah. And while I can see when you have palpable rage in videos that go viral of you at climate conferences where you just don’t even understand why the fuck they’ve invited you there because they’re just lying to your face again. I don’t feel as though you have rage towards the active citizen. You are aware of the fact that a lot of people are being either misled or denied the information that would make them act in a way that would move against capitalist gains for the, you know, the 1%. But it I think sometimes you are positioned as this, like hyper judgmental, angry, irrational, moody teenager, whereas actually you have immense compassion from everything I’ve seen you say in the clips that don’t go viral for everyone. And you understand that they just simply aren’t armed with information that’s going to be vital to their survival and vital even more so to the survival of their offspring should they have them.

Greta Yeah, exactly. It’s a bit funny to me that I’m being portrayed as this as you said, this angry teenager who just screams irrationally at people. It’s quite funny because I’m probably the least angry person I know. But yes, as they say we’re not angry with with the people in general, there’s this sort of widespread myth that it’s humanity that has created the climate crisis, and it’s not humanity that has created this. It is a few number of people, together with our current economic and political structures that have created this crisis and are continuing to fuel it. Those are the ones that we should be angry at. We know who they are, the CEOs, people in power, etc., who have purposely destroying the planet, sacrificing countless of humans and things that we like invaluable cause [noise] sorry, that was sorry.

Jameela Don’t worry it’s not live. So you can.

Greta OK. [speaking Swedish] interview.

Jameela There you are, being angry and crazy again.

Greta Yes.

Jameela Go on.

Greta There are some people who have purposely and knowingly misled and misguided the general population, and they have been sacrificing the planet and and countless of human beings as we know it in order for them to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And we know who these people are. They are the ones that we are targeting. And people have been denied their democratic rights to information about the climate crisis. In my experience, the the knowledge gap is so immense. I, I was something that I mentioned in the book. I was part of creating a survey in order to measure the general level of awareness around the climate crisis. But we couldn’t use the results because it was either too inaccurate or just. You couldn’t make any sense of it because people just didn’t know what these terms mean.

Jameela When you say it was too inaccurate, you mean as in the answers were so inaccurate it was unpublishable.

Greta Yes. Yes.

Jameela Shit. Sorry.

Greta That’s the level we’re at.

Jameela Yeah, 100%. And again, that’s not down to a general stupidity of man, that is down to very selective reporting from the media. Even the media that claim. Even the media who claim to be on your side. A lot of them are being when you look into the weeds of who the media are funded by, are being funded by people whose interest is in to maintain the the the current speed of spending and consumption, all of which is in such excess.

Greta Exactly. And so many journalists that I know they want to do more and they want to go out and do reporting about this. And they want to educate themselves and treat the crisis more like a crisis. But they aren’t really allowed to by either their editors or that they are just so afraid of being seen as activists or alarmists. And there’s a similar patterns when it comes to scientists whose job it more or less has become to communicate this fact. It’s not a scientist’s job to communicate this. A scientist job is to create and collect data and. And create, yeah, science.

Jameela Information. Yeah, yeah.

Greta Yeah. But since no one else is communicating it, it has fallen on on the shoulders of scientists’ children, and the people who are most affected by the climate crisis to communicate this. And unfortunately, the most powerful voices in this world belong to those who are set on destroying it. So in that way, we are quite outnumbered or out powered or, you know.

Jameela I had an experience recently in which I was on a media tour for a separate project, and I chose at the same time as the project came out, one of the countries that I’m from Pakistan, a third of the country was under water, 50 million people were displaced. I mean, it’s just it’s such an obscene statistic and one that I know that you see around the world constantly. And but while I was trying to talk about it, I got cut off at every single point. As soon as I would bring it up, as soon as I was trying to raise the alarm that a third of a country is underwater and tens of millions of people are displaced and so many are dead to the, to the point where we can’t even account for them yet because they’re underwater still, and no one in American media or British media would publish it and they would actively cut me off as soon as I would start bringing it up. And I don’t think that’s any necessarily like great conspiracy. It’s not a media conspiracy, but it is just the fact that it’s it’s it is the inconvenient truth. It is something that nobody wants to be accountable for. And I’m sure that you and I both can attest to the idea that we tend to like find hysteria. If a country like if a Western country with predominantly white people is affected will hear about the hurricanes in the U.S. But globally there will be silence when poorer countries or less developed countries, etc., or countries that are predominantly full of people with more melanin in their skin, those people are largely ignored. And I know that you’ve spoken about your own frustration about the fact that indigenous communities are the ones who are the most impacted and yet never platformed. Can you can you explain to the people listening to this, you know, who who aren’t aware as to what exactly is happening in the countries most affected? Because I think it’s been very much so hidden from us.

Greta Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s exactly as you say. It’s just pure environmental racism, climate racism and climate injustice. That’s the people who are who have been historically more exploited are the ones who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, also the once least responsible for it. And that is a very inconvenient fact that many in the so-called Western world don’t want to don’t seem to want to acknowledge. The climate crisis when we when we talk about the climate crisis and when we think about it, we mostly think about it as something that’s going to happen in a faraway, distant future that’s going to affect our children. And that’s probably one of the reasons why the school strike movement gained so much attention. But the climate crisis is a reality and has been a reality for a very long time for so such a large proportion of the world’s population. People are literally dying and losing their livelihoods. People are having to bury their children and their family members are losing everything. It’s just being drowned in this in these different news stories. Not we don’t pay almost any attention to it. I mean, that’s why the climate crisis is an existential crisis already today. It’s not. We are seeing these consequences escalates in a way that no one expected a few decades ago. And just because it’s happening far away from the people who are actually governing the world, who are the most powerful, that it’s it’s not something that’s on their agenda, unfortunately.

Jameela There’s recently been a lot of rhetoric out of the United Kingdom saying that the UK is is apparently responsible for only several percent of the factors that are contributing to the climate crisis. And I see that there is significantly conflicting evidence in your book to that. Can you tell me where that misunderstanding comes from? Is it the fact that the UK are outsourcing the labor to other poorer countries and then benefiting from it and therefore fund it, funding it?

Greta Generally, there seems to be this universal norm that’s if you have the possibility to outsource the emission, then countries do that predominantly with countries from from the so-called global north. And by doing so, they not only have to pay cheaper wages and and so on. They also the emissions don’t count in their national statistics as well as international aviation and shipping, the burning of biomass. The military. And there are just so many loopholes that have been actively designed to keep the people in power from being held accountable. When we say that our leaders haven’t acted on the climate emergency or that they haven’t done anything, that is a big lie. They have been very active, but not in the way that we that we would hope. But they have been actively spending their time creating these loopholes in these international frameworks that allow them to continue, as usual, benefitting from exploiting other people, other parts of the world, and taking credit for it. Because countries like the UK and Sweden as well say that we have been lowering our emissions for the last decade when that is not necessarily the case when we include all our total emissions. For example, in Sweden, where I live, only a third of our actual emissions are included in our national statistics and in our climate targets because we exclude consumption based emissions.

Jameela When you say when you say consumption based emissions, can you just break down what that means?

Greta If I buy a laptop that’s manufactured in China, China is the country that’s accountable for those emissions and not me. And since we have outsourced the production to countries like China and in countries in other parts of the world, then we don’t have to be responsible for those emissions. And that’s very favorable for countries like Sweden, etc.. Also, another major thing that we exclude is the burning of biomass, which per energy unit emits more CO2 than other fossil fuels. But since trees are, they grow back, not in the timeframe we have for the Paris Agreement. They’re considered to be climate neutral. So that’s another blindspots in the international frameworks. So I think one of the biggest stories right now is the fact that all this cheating, which I would call it, is taking place, and that is that this is all perfectly legal and is even encouraged by the current system that we live in. This is how we were supposed to do.

Jameela Oh, it’s such a disgusting loophole. It’s it’s so disgusting to have all of this labor and all of this consumption outsource to countries like where I come from. And then to blame us and point the finger at us. And then when we go underwater, it’s like, well, they did this to themselves. How much pollution is coming outside that part of the world? And yet you are deliberately what you’re doing is you are like these countries that have been historically oppressed by Western nations are now in a situation where they are so desperate for money that they are going to take the jobs that are available for them. You know, it’s like this this grim catch 22.

Greta Yeah there’s so many layers and layers onto this.

Jameela And these people are impoverished and then barely being paid and they’re being hugely extorted and exploited. And and then the blame is sort of shifted onto them and their country. Their country. That economy has normally been crippled by the history of the West especially. It’s like the United Kingdom, the British Empire.

Greta And adding to that, those same countries are now being either swept away by by rising sea levels or left in ruins by storms or droughts, etc..

Jameela Yeah the people are starving. I mean, where I come from, I think the temperature reached either 51 or 53 degrees centigrade, which is terrifying in the summer. Like this is just it’s unlivable. The crops die, the animals die, our ecosystems are failing. And again, it’s something that just feels very far away from us as we will play with our pet dogs in our hands. We think the animals are fine.

Greta Yeah. And you talk about the UK before we have to remember that the climate crisis is a cumulative crisis, that what we do now, what we emit now, will stay up in the atmosphere for a very long time, continuing to disrupting the biosphere and and the social life on earth as we know it. And. Since because of this fact, we don’t only have to think about our current and future emissions, we also have to take historical emissions into account. Right now we have emitted about 90% of the CO2 budget, which gives us a 6 to 7% chance of staying below 1.5 degree of temperature rise, which is a limit often often used in the rhetorics.

Jameela And that is the temperature rise that will lead to the sea levels rising by two meters.

Greta It it depends, but we will also, when we get to that level of warming, will also trigger several feedback loops and pass several tipping points as well that might lead to even more warming. It’s it’s all a big mess. But anyway, that’s the threshold that we are aiming at right now that we are trying to stay below. But 90% of the CO2 budget, the CO2 that we can emit to have a 6 to 7% chance of reaching that target have already been emitted mostly by the countries of the so-called global North. And because of the fact that the climate crisis is cumulative crisis, you would think that these historical emissions would be at least taking up a minor part of the discussion when it comes to the climate emissions, since this is like 90%, but it’s being completely ignored by almost everyone.

Jameela And also when it’s not being ignored, it’s especially, I think, by and it’s so curious that this has become a politicized issue because and it’s become like a binary politicized issue, given that the people who are in the middle of a country who perhaps are more likely to vote Republican, let’s say in the United States or similarly in the United Kingdom, conservative are almost suffering more than, you know, as they would refer to them as the elite liberals, you know, on the coasts. We are being impacted far less than those whose entire livelihoods and stocks are going under and droughts and floods. It’s it’s so bizarre. But I’m seeing, you know, like I think just yesterday something came out saying, oh, climate scientists are trying to actively hide the fact that the world hasn’t actually gotten hotter in the last 15 years. And they’re using this specific year of 1998. Right. Which was a freakishly hot year, from what I understand. And I’m a climate idiot, a self-professed climate Neanderthal. But I’m I’m trying to learn they specifically have chosen this one freakishly hot year and not comparing it to 1999 or 2000 or 1997, even all of the years actually are more consistent. And it’s it’s also incredibly disingenuous to only use 15 years. What would you say is your biggest frustration right now, which I know is a huge question because you have so many. But currently, what is your what is your biggest frustration?

Greta Hmm. That kind of cherry picking is, of course, a source of frustration for us because it’s so easy to do that. And it’s so easy to just choose a number, to choose one small part of of science that you use to to boost your narrative. But I think. The the most frustrating thing is people who are more or less aware of what’s happening and yet choose not to do anything. And we know that there are quite a lot of those people, not least people who have very powerful positions and who have spent lots of money and resources in actively misleading the public and spreading disinformation, misinformation in order to send a signal that the climate isn’t actually destabilizing, everything is fine. We can just continue like now, those people who say so or hysterical and so on. Because as we talked about in the beginning, so many people are unaware of the full implications of the climate crisis. But those who are aware or even a bit aware, that’s the most frustrating thing. And people who say, I know that I can do something, but I, I won’t because someone has to tell me what to do. Even though the scientists and effective people are literally screaming at them, telling them what to do.

Jameela Well, it’s not that they don’t know what to do, it’s just that they know that it will cost them or the people that support them or keep them in power.

Greta Yeah, exactly. It’s inconvenient.

Jameela So while I know that you’ve been asked this question 7 billion times, and I’m sorry, but it’s always an opportunity to reach a new audience. When I told everyone that I was interviewing you, everyone lost their shit. I’ve never had a reaction like this ever to a guest. And when I asked people what they would like to ask you, most people just wanted me to tell you that they love you. So just to combat all of the people calling you hysterical or saying cruel or incredibly inappropriate things to you since you were a small child, I do want you to know that you are incredibly loved and respected. And you you are a very empowering human being, not just in that you give people hope, because I don’t think that’s something, a burden that should be on your shoulders. But you remind people what we as seemingly powerless individuals are capable of. So thank you for that and I needed to relay that. But a lot of people are saying, what can we tangibly do right now? What can we as individuals? So we are aware that we do not bear the burden of the decision making, but we can pressure that decision making. But could you could you lead people into some sort of empowering, galvanizing advice they can start participating in today?

Greta Yeah, of course as as an individual. There are many different types of individuals. Some people have a more responsibility than others, surely. But we all have somewhat of a responsibility. And I think an easy reply would be just try to educate yourself about the climate crisis, because when you know more and when you are fully aware of it, then you will more or less know what to do and what you can do. The dos and don’ts. But then also that has to lead to something. Just I think we need to realize the power that we have as as as people, because it is the people who who actually decide what we do or what not to do, even though that the system is completely corrupt and so on. If we would reach a critical mass with people who would demand real change, then the people in power wouldn’t have any other choice but to respond to that. And we’ve seen throughout history that the biggest changes have been led from the people, and that is something that we can definitely do again. We have so much power that’s that we just have to reclaim and become an activist. I would say the best advice. It’s so vague, but there are so many different types of of activism. And being an activist, you can do what you are best at. You can do what you want to do, what you like doing. It can be either using art, your talents to communicate this message and spread this sense of of crisis emergency. Or you can you can start a strike, you can join an occupation or something like that, civil disobedience. You can go out on the streets demanding that your voice be heard. There are so many different things that you can do but get organized and get in contact with people who are like minded or search out people who who are like minded, who care about the same things, who have the same values, and also want to get involved because it’s much easier to do something when you are many and to come up with things to do. I would say that I am forever grateful that I became an activist. This is where I have my my friends. This is where I have my life. I wouldn’t be able to just live a I would not know what to say, but ordinary life without basically spending most of my almost all my my time on activism. Because then I feel like I’m useful. I can do something.

Jameela 100%. Can I just add to one of the measures that we can all take today? And it’s it’s a similar message that I preach when I’m talking about the evils of diet culture and what it does to all kinds of different parts of the world and ways in which it’s killing people. It’s just the power that we have is not only in our voices, our voices are so incredibly powerful, but also we’ve seen with Extinction Rebellion, etc. Sometimes they find a way to just walk right through us and shut our voices out. The thing that speaks the loudest to a lot of these people, even if they deny it, is money, and to cut them off at the source of money, to cut off the things that they are funded by, to stop buying into those things, I think is something that we all need to work harder towards participating in. We have to we have to be more conscious of what it is that we are engaging in financially because we we have the power to decide who is powerful and who loses power. And we can strip that power from people overnight. And and we have we have seen that in the last few years, how malleable the world is and how adaptable it is during COVID, it was wild to see how fast people were able to bring about like complete global change. I didn’t recognize the world as it was at such speed. We were able to reconfigure entire systems so we know that we’re capable of it. We know that we have the power. And so if that means looking into our consumption, if that means looking into where we are sourcing the products that we buy, all of that is where we also need to mobilize and educate ourselves. Like we we do not look at the labels of where something was made, where something comes from, how it was, how it was brought over to our country. And that’s, I think, a huge step in our actual activism is is where do you put your pound or dollar or whatever currency of the world that you come from because these people are kept in power by money. They’re so it’s so little of it is actually whether or not they deserve to be in power, whether or not they actually have the credentials. It’s mostly who is bolstering those people and how do we cripple them. I think is something that I feel.

Greta Yeah. Consumer choices are, I would say, a form of activism. People in this debate. It’s very common that people say we shouldn’t be focusing on individual actions because we should be focusing on a larger systemic change. But also, while we should be focusing mostly on that, we also can’t achieve a system change without also individuals changing their minds, their behavior, and by, for example, stop flying or becoming vegan. It’s not only that you redirect the money elsewhere, it’s also about changing social norms and showing to people around you that I am changing my behavior because we are in an existential emergency and that, as you said, we can change social norms overnight. We can change the way we see things, the way we perceive the world, like overnight.

Jameela 100%. And we are that system. Fundamentally, we might not be the ones who who press the switch at the top, but we are the system. We empower the system entirely with our attention, our money and our our, even our algorithmic attention. We can starve the media companies who are gaslighting us. We can starve everyone in the ways in which they have been trying to starve us. And that might not be the most privileged people in the West, but they are starving people to death right now as we speak with their actions and we can show them what that feels like. If I may, because this is a mental health podcast. I would love to kind of talk to you a little bit about that. And I wonder, do you even feel safe to be able to talk openly and honestly about your mental health, given how often people use everything about you to discredit you?

Greta Yeah. No. I mean. I mean, I would. I would of course I choose my words because anything I said could and will most likely

Jameela Be used against you.

Greta Yeah. And, like, misinterpreted and turned around 100 times.

Jameela Can I. Can I just bring up an interview of yours that I just watched the other day where someone was trying. It was it was a journalist, I think maybe from in the BBC. It was trying to goad you into saying that you have an do you have an affinity with King Charles? That’s what she was trying to do you remember this interview it happened, I think not very long ago.

Greta Mate. Ok.

Jameela And she was saying that I know you do so many interviews, but she was like, you know, he really cared about the climate in the sixties and people called him weird and crazy and. Do you feel you have an affinity Do you feel you have an affinity with King Charles knowing that the fucking headline is going to be Greta Thunberg Feels Affinity with the King of England.

Greta Yeah.

Jameela The constant dodging of those questions. I watched you to handle that like an ice hockey player. Like that was bonkers to watch.

Greta Yeah. And in the beginning when I was like, I was 15, when those questions were starting to be directed towards me and like, I had never I have like selective mutism. I didn’t speak to people for like four years.

Jameela Can you explain what that is just for anyone who doesn’t know?

Greta Yeah. Selective mutism is that sometimes you simply cannot speak. It’s a very simple way of explaining it.

Jameela And is that a facet of the autism spectrum, or is that separate?

Greta No, it’s separate. But it’s often linked to autism. Yeah. So I didn’t know how to speak to people. And then I met with these journalists who were just like trying to put me on the spot and sometimes just very unexpected, like showing up outside my house and like that. And it’s just like, don’t you have any sense of dignity left?

Jameela 100%. Was it just it’s so obscene And it’s also treating you as though you are proclaiming to be the expert. That’s something that I’ve seen a lot of your interviews, which is why I wanted to very specifically try to mostly talk to you about the things that I do know that you know 100% about from your own experience, which is the gaslighting and the media spin and all of these different things, these tangible things that people like you or me can actually do, rather than trying to challenge you on on degrees of temperature or statistics when they know that you’ve never purported to be a scientist, you’re just someone whose voice happened to catch the attention and the imagination of like a large portion of the generation. But can you talk about the impact on and you can also tell me to fuck off, which is fine, but can you talk about the mental health impact of of being so young, being in that position? While I know that you recognize the privilege you have with your voice being heard was like, are you okay?

Greta I. It depends, but but of course, I do realize that I have this massive opportunity of having a platform and being able to communicate that while also being a bit annoyed or a bit like very annoyed that the role I’ve been, the role role I’ve gotten removes the focus away from others who actually need to be heard. While also I understand that they do that because it’s easy for them to have a story and to have a face and etc. There are so many layers to this and that you overthink. But I think that we don’t do this because it’s because it’s easy, but just because there’s simply no other alternative. And also personally to make clear that the positive impacts of this that this has on my health very much outweighs the negative effects. But sometimes you just want to be left alone and not overanalyzed by people you don’t know, and that you that do very well know just want to do you harm. And sometimes those people are very close to you or get close to you. And that’s that’s a bit uncomfortable.

Jameela That’s incredibly distressing. I, I feel as though because, of course, your age and also because of your the fact that you are, uh, you, you are a woman, but people have been so intensely scrutinizing of you and on a smaller scale. I definitely relate to that. And I remember, you know, like you and I sort of kind of rose to different levels of people being very aware of us in the media around roughly the same time. And I was in my thirties and I was I felt like I was sometimes drowning with stress and the feeling of of there’s so much to fix the so much to do how like how do, how, how can I spread myself across all of these different like the pressure is so intense that one puts upon themselves. How do you and I think a lot of young people out there right now are facing that level of responsibility of God where do I start? And is that something that you identify with? Because especially once you you say I am an activist and you put your hand up and you say, I want to help. And everyone’s like, right, we need you here, here, here, here. Yeah, yeah. How do you how do you navigate that?

Greta I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know sometimes. Yeah, there’s just. Sometimes there’s just not enough time.

Jameela Have you learned how to select the thing that you know you can be the most?

Greta I’ve tried to.

Jameela Effective in.

Greta But having school has been a very efficient way of just like. I have class now. I need to shut. I can’t be replying to emails. All lessons or whatever it might be. But it’s. It’s difficult. And then, as you say. Accepting the fact that you can’t do everything and that’s you that you shouldn’t be doing anyway, because of course we should leave space for others. But so much like almost all of the work that you do with activism is just meetings and structuring and coordinating different people and, and like that’s the all the invisible work that people don’t don’t see.

Jameela The moments that don’t go viral.

Greta Yeah.

Jameela Um what about and kind of and again, you don’t have to answer these questions. I’m more just asking because I’m personally interested and fascinated by you and so I think there are many people, but I, I always wonder when someone rises to this level of of prominence at such a young age, like what that’s like on a personal level when it comes to making friends at school and not having people like just the imbalance of the fact that you don’t know anything about someone who you meet and someone has all these preconceptions about you and whether that’s or or a dislike of you for some reason. Can you talk about what that’s like?

Greta Yeah, wherever you go, you just if I step outside, I know that I am being watched. It sounds very like like a conspiracy, but but people take pictures and just point and things all the time. In Sweden that’s to a much lesser extent, because we don’t have our celebrity culture is not as intense as abroad, which is which has made things so much easier, like at school people don’t talk to me that often. Because and it feels very nice. Because then I can still be left alone. It’s like a safe space.

Jameela Yeah. And you feel like you’ve made friends at school or are your friends mostly people that you’ve made through like activism.

Greta I would say most of my friends are the people I’ve met through activism, but of course, at school, too. But I have so many different roles and different personalities to fit into those roles. Yeah, sometimes you’re like in a press crush with like, I don’t know how like a hundred journalists or paparazzi surrounding you. You can’t go anywhere. And and the next day you’re like in school, sitting in the back of the classroom and being quiet.

Jameela How do you how do you reconcile that? Like, has that been something you’ve had to learn how to balance?

Greta Yes. Yeah. And I don’t know if I if I if I’m good at it, but I’m trying.

Jameela I think you do. I think you’re doing fucking great. And and, you know, in a way, like some of this is I wonder how this is impacted by and I want to word this delicately as possible, but when I did mention the you were coming on, there were also a lot of people wanted to talk about wanted me to talk about autism because there’s so little representation of people who are open about it in public and also women specifically. And autism looks so differently different in women because we are socialized so differently to men. And so very often, obviously not exclusively, but very often it looks in a way. And so there are a lot of people who might look at you. And the fact that you, I don’t know, make eye contact or you are you speak in a way that doesn’t sound like the stereotypical idea of what autism has been portrayed by Hollywood and your very high functioning. There are people who maybe doubt that you are autistic. And then on the at the same time, there are people who disqualify everything you say because of that autism without actually understanding what it is. Do you feel comfortable talking about autism with me?

Greta Yeah. Yeah.

Jameela So one of the first things I want to talk to you about was masking, right? That is a big part of of being able to function within a sort of neurotypical world. Do you, would you feel comfortable explaining what masking is?

Greta Yes. It’s it’s basically it’s different for everyone, but basically pretending that you are neuro typical. That you don’t have autism in order to fit in, in order to not stand out in any way. Because because of different reasons, because sometimes it’s just a survival mechanism and because people treat you so differently if you would act as your true self. For me, it’s definitely been part of my life for a very long time when I was diagnosed and basically the only thing that my family was met with was like, what? Is she autistic? She’s not like like she can’t be autistic because in their heads autistic people were boys playing video games, not talking to anyone. And it was a very stereotypical a very clear stereotype. And of course, if if I hadn’t got gotten the right contacts, if I hadn’t been sent to the right place, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed because people would have just like, oh, well, she’s just it’s just hormones or whatever people people say.

Jameela It’s hormones. Or she’s just weird as what a lot of people like, what have women specifically it’s like there’s something wrong with her rather than her brain just works slightly differently. But do you think that that has actually been uh, I know that obviously, like in certain ways it can be a hindrance if you are in a world that works neuro typically, but also for your specific line of work. I think about this all the time. It sounds really great. I think about you all the time. Greta No.Do you think that in some ways the the way in which your brain works, the capacity that you’ve learned to mask at means that you are able you know, you were talking about the fact that you have to be all these different kind of people for all these different facets of your life. Has that been helped or hindered by the masking.

Greta I would say definitely helped. I can be a completely different persona when I’m on stage, which means that I don’t I don’t have stage fright, and I think I’m just so used to to masking and then in another context, I’m completely different because I’ve learned to adapt to that environment. Becoming a public figure. I think has been easier for me because I’m autistic. Of course, harder too in some circumstances.

Jameela In which ways.

Greta Just for example, being in a large crowd with so many cameras pointed towards you. That’s a lot of them. And it’s.

Jameela Hyperstimulation.

Greta Yeah, exactly. And even before I was a public person walking outside, I’m always like taking notes on my environment and noticing, like, small details that I have to do now as well. And I do that naturally, because I always have to see, like, is anyone filming me right now? And so on. So I notice those details anyway, so I don’t have to pay that much more attention and energy in my surroundings.

Jameela I also and also again, like I want to avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping autistic people or treating them as if they’re a monolith. And if because you say something that applies to all autistic people. But I also wonder if, like the the way that certain some autistic people can conceive things can be quite binary, which helps people stay very clear on the facts and not get caught up in the nonsense. Right. The the the the games that are played around these conversations to divert from them, deflect away from them to gaslight people. There is a hyper focus you have for the truth and for what is straightforward and it makes you a straight shooter. And I think because people are not used to seeing a woman shoot straight like that where you just like there is no frill to your words whatsoever in this book as well, which is obviously not just written by you it’s written by lots of experts, but you pull no punches. And I think that that feels especially jarring to people because women have been socialized to pull all of our punches and to dress everything up in a way ourselves and our words in a way that is palatable to men. And that’s just not something you really seem to have to try to navigate. It seems to just come from quite naturally.

Greta Yeah, exactly. And that has definitely helped me in activism. It’s why I started activism in the first place, because I just couldn’t understand why everyone around me, which is so obsessed with taking part in this role play the social game that I couldn’t understand and that I didn’t want to be a part of. So I was like, This is all this is all wrong. I’m not going to be a part of it and I’m going to do something else because this is the only thing that’s right. And I have very strong principles in that way. And I don’t care about being mocked in the same way or being unpopular. So I. I don’t like to choose words in order to please people. I don’t say like, if I say this, then people will become uncomfortable because this is the truth and this is what we need to convey.

Jameela And also we need to be uncomfortable as we’re never going to change.

Greta Exactly.

Jameela The only time we ever make a change is in discomfort.

Greta Yeah. In a crisis that’s created by injustice and exploitation, we can’t expect that not to be some level of being uncomfortable.

Jameela 100%. And you talk about the fact that there therefore you don’t really care about the. About pleasing people like which I very much so identify with. Like you don’t, I literally I literally fundamentally don’t care. Like, I don’t want to upset people. I don’t want to hurt people. Of course, like I have like an element of moral responsibility to try to be a good the best person I can be, be careful. But I’m really not interested in being liked at all. By more than about four people. There’s about four people I really want to like me because I want to be around them. But everyone else, I you know, I’m not interested in that. And. And do you receive so much trolly? I mean, the most epic takedown of the accidental takedown of Andrew Tate occurred this year. Simply because he interacted with you and your response garnered so much attention that then, you know, it led to total chaos for him. But is that also, would you say, like part of your kind of fiber, the ability to is that part of what makes you unaffected by the amount of trolling that you get because your ego isn’t in this?

Greta I would say yes. I don’t care like the slightest what people might think of me if I do this or that. I just care if it’s if it’s morally right. If in the future I will be able to look back at this to say like, yeah, I did what was right. For example, in the case with Andrew Tate, I didn’t know who he was.

Jameela I actually didn’t really either until you said it.

Greta But I was like, He has a lot of followers. He won’t like it won’t bother him, it won’t ruin anything for him.

Jameela The irony. Oh, God.

Greta And I was sick. I had the flu when I was I was bored when I was writing that. And I was like, Huh. Yeah.

Jameela It was incredible. It was incredibly funny And a victorious moment for so many people online because it’s so rare in this day and age to ever get to see justice we rarely ever get to see. We talk about justice all the time, but we never see it play out. We never see you know, we talk about karma all the time, but you never see instant karma ever play out. And it’s so funny and amazing and the like, the schadenfreude of it, but also just the victory victory of it. Was it really it really boosted our year. Thank you for that. Really. It’s so funny. And so your life is so ridiculous.

Greta Yeah.

Jameela It’s just been completely ridiculous. Do you ever think about what you would have done alternatively, if the world wasn’t going to hell in a handbasket climate wise? Is there is there a different path that you have ever had in mind?

Greta Many. I don’t know. There are there isn’t a lack of other issues that that are very urgent. So I will probably be an activist for that too. But I don’t see myself living like a life, going to a 9 to 5 job and then not doing anything like not being active, not being a democratic. Be an active Democratic citizens being an activist. And I don’t think I would handle that very well.

Jameela Yeah, you you enjoy the the the life of kind of service. And and there’s also just such a it’s the lack of the logic in the way that people conduct themselves that drives me mad as to how shortsighted people can be.

Greta Yeah.

Jameela But I’m I’m really happy to hear that you are coming to the end of school, that you have been able to, like, regain some normal like sort of when I use the word normal but like, you know, some sort of facets of your youth because so much of your childhood has been and I know you don’t consider it taken away because you’ve been able to do this extraordinary thing, but so much of your developmental years have been lived in the public eye, in in service of us. And it’s such a ginormous sacrifice, and I can’t tell you how much all of us appreciate it and are massively moved by it because it’s it reminds us that we have so much more to do. And you live in my head, rent free every time I’m making a decision about travel or for dinner like there’s the Greta Thunberg, how dare you? Like comes into my head and I find myself, like, jolting backwards. And I, as many others on, are on a path to doing better. And your book is is bleak. As the word that gets used by a lot of people. It is terrifying. But I found it very motivating. And and I and I would love for you to just talk to me a little bit about hope, because the other overwhelming question that came to me for you is how do we maintain hope? And I know how much you dislike that question. So I would like for you to answer that the way that you always do and in as to your practical approach to hope.

Greta Yeah, I think that’s the way we maintain hope is just simply to create it ourselves. We can’t just sit on our couch waiting for someone else to do something, waiting for something to happen. Hope is is like a verb. It’s something that you do. If you if you create change, that will bring hope. When we start to act, hope will be everywhere. So instead, if instead of waiting for hope, we should create it. And I find also so much hope in in the community that I’m in, in this activism, in all all the friends I have here, all the people I love here. And we’re doing this together. And also, of course, people like you, for example, people who are willing to learn and who are. And who are starting to engage and who are starting to shift these social norms. I find that very helpful. Hope is not hope for me is not that politicians and people in power are saying that we are starting to do something when they are obviously not. We are moving in the wrong direction. The emissions are on the rise. Still, for me, hope is the people and the ability that the people has when we actually decide to do something.

Jameela So it comes from results. Your hope comes from results that you actively see. I think I feel very similarly that I can’t think of it as this surreal, esoteric thing that I just wish for, because then I feel very disempowered. I feel very disempowered by and I don’t mean all prayer, but the prayer for change. I only ever feel empowered when I use my power to activate change. And I think that that’s a very important message because I think I think and I wonder what you feel about this. But I think the system, the system of politics, the system of media, all of it is designed to make itself sound so complicated that we all feel helpless.

Greta Oh, yeah, exactly. And they are benefiting from it. If we feel helpless, then we stay inside. We don’t go out on the streets because we don’t think that we can make a difference. So as long as we feel powerless, they win because then they don’t have any pressure on them to to change anything. And then we will maintain status quo. So there’s a reason why we are being made to feel powerless.

Jameela Is there a message you have to anyone who’s listening to this right now about that hope, about that power or about anything?

Greta Maybe that’s right now we we are moving deeper and deeper into uncharted territory for humanity. And we are living through the beginning of an existential crisis that is escalating as we speak. Everyone is needed to change this to to change course. If you get involved now, you will still be among the pioneers because there are so few people involved compared to how many we need to be. So it’s and also the fact that it’s never too late to save as much as we can possibly save. There will always be always be things left to save.

Jameela Yeah. And if ever you need a reminder that that is possible, just remember COVID. Just remember that we never thought of a world in which everyone could lockdown or everyone could take certain vaccines or everyone but that suddenly disabled people were told who’ve been told their whole lives you can never be hired because you have to work from home. Suddenly the entire world shifted, including Hollywood, like the most remote job, was able to shift to digital and working from home and kind of hasn’t gone back even post-pandemic. So I urge you to remember that anything is possible when we really, really care, when we develop our own hyperfocus for the issues at hand, and we will only benefit from it. Greta, thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for this book, The Climate Book. It is so clearly written and it is, I think, a deeply hopeful and and motivating book. Before you go, will you just tell me? Not in pounds and kilos. What do you weigh?

Greta I weigh lots of engagement activism, and I think I can say hope in a way. Also nerdy excitement to learn more things and to do and to do everything that I feel needs to be done, and also lots of jigsaw puzzles. Crocheted frog hats and carrots, frozen mango and lots of other things.

Jameela That’s just one of the best and most specific I Weigh’s we’ve ever had I’m going to go and try some frozen mango immediately. You’re the best comeback any time.

Greta Yeah, and also I want to I want to say a big thank you to you for for doing everything that you’re doing for using your platform. I know that it means so much for so many people and for doing this podcast and I Weigh. I’m truly grateful for that.

Jameela Right back at you time’s 1000. Thank you.