Thunberg’s parents – Svante Thunberg, an actor, and Malena Ernman, a prominent opera singer – are familiar with performing to large audiences, and environmental consciousness runs deep in the family. Her father’s distant relative, Svanta Arrhenius, won the 1903 Nobel Prize for chemistry after calculating the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on the temperature of the earth.
Scenes from the Heart, a book by Thunberg’s mother on her daughters’ struggles with special needs, has also helped spread the family’s story. Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism, meaning she only speaks when she feels compelled to do so. But Thunberg views the condition as a gift. “We aren’t very good at lying and we don’t normally enjoy participating in the social game that the rest of you seem so fond of,” she drily quipped in her TEDx talk.
The teenager credits the “black and white” viewpoint characteristic of autism with helping her confront the stark reality of climate change. “Either we limit the warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, or we don’t,” she wrote. “There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.”
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