Can You Hear Me?

From her school strike last August to the meetings with world leaders and legislators ever since, this year one voice proved louder than the rest: that of the teen Swede speaking up for Mother Earth. And for all of us

- Stuart McGurk

The story of Greta Thunberg, now 16, has been much told, but rarely well. She is the Swedish schoolgirl who, in August last year, decided to school strike for climate and sparked a global movement – about 1.6 million people in 133 countries. The one who has covered Time magazine met Obama and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The one who has given speeches at the UN, Davos and the British parliament. The one who has become a symbol for a generation not being listened to by a generation that won’t have to suffer the consequences of not listening. We have ten years, she will often say in her speeches, to stave off a chain reaction that will forever alter the future of our planet. If we only start listening when she’s 26, it’ll already be too late.

All of this you can find on the internet. It’s only a google away – knock yourself out.

The question is, which version of the above is true? The cynical version has it that it is her parents who have pushed her into this, writing her speeches and pimping their daughter to promote their cause.

The optimistic version has it the other way around: that it’s her mother, Malena Ernman, who gave up her opera career for her daughter by agreeing to no longer fly. And how she did it not for the planet, but for her daughter, who was depressed, not eating, not talking, and for whom the cause became a path to recovery.

The truth, as it often tends to, lies somewhere in between.

The first thing Greta Thunberg tells GQ is what she’s had for breakfast. This isn’t a genuine question on our part – in fact, it’s a mic test – but the answer is telling. She ate bread “that was about to go off” with some hummus “that was about to go off too.”