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2022 SWEDISH ELECTION

Greta Thunberg deplores lack of climate debate in Swedish vote

Sweden's most famous climate activist, Greta Thunberg, on Friday deplored the lack of debate on the climate as the nation prepares to go to the polls on Sunday.

Published: 10 September 2022 13:58 CEST
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg marches during a protest
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (C) marches during a 'Fridays for Future' movement protest in Stockholm, Sweden on September 9, 2022, ahead of the country's general elections on September 11, 2022. Photo: Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

Climate concerns have taken a backseat in the election campaign. Voters are more focused on rising gang violence and soaring energy prices.

“The climate crisis has been more or less ignored in this election campaign. At best it’s been reduced to an issue about energy. So we have a lot to do,” she told AFP.

Sporting a striped T-shirt, the young activist took part in a protest with several hundred others in central Stockholm on Friday.

Sweden’s legislative elections on Sunday, where 349 seats in parliament are up for grabs, are expected to be a nail-biter, with the left- and right-wing blocs polling dead even.

READ ALSO: Your guide to The Local’s Swedish election coverage

“I am protesting because only voting is not enough,” Thunberg said, criticising politicians for not doing enough on the climate.

“Right now none of the political parties are delivering,” she added.

The 19-year-old activist, who is eligible to vote in her first election this year, has said she had not yet made up her mind which party to vote for.

But she stressed it was important for people to voice their concerns “to show politicians that the climate and the environmental emergency is something that we care about and we are not going to let them get away with another four years of nothing”.

In recent years, Sweden’s left-wing Green party has struggled to attract voters and stay above the four-percent threshold needed to be represented in parliament.

READ ALSO: LATEST POLLS: Who is in the lead with two days to go until Sweden’s election?

The latest polls credit the Greens with between 4.5 and 7.9 percent of voter support.

Thunberg, who began her “School strike for the climate” outside Sweden’s parliament two weeks ahead of the 2018 election when she was 15, has risen to become one of the world’s most famous champions of action on climate change.

Spearheading a global youth movement, Thunberg has spoken at the United Nations, been named a Time person of the year and been tipped as a favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Member comments

  1. more effective than repeating “how dare you…” would be to run for office and try to implement whatever she think is the solution. Hope she will, someday soon.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Several hundred women surrounded Sweden's parliament with a giant knitted red scarf to protest political inaction over global warming.

Published: 22 April 2024 11:47 CEST
Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Responding to a call from the Mothers Rebellion movement (Rebellmammorna in Swedish), the women marched around the Riksdag with the scarf made of 3,000 smaller scarves, urging politicians to honour a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“I am here for my child Dinalo and for all the kids. I am angry and sad that politicians in Sweden are acting against the climate,” Katarina Utne, 41, a mother of a four-year-old and human resources coach, told AFP.

The women unfurled their scarves and marched for several hundred metres, singing and holding placards calling to “save the climate for the children’s future”.

“The previous government was acting too slowly. The current government is going in the wrong direction in terms of climate policy,” said psychologist Sara Nilsson Lööv, referring to a recent report on Swedish climate policy.

The government, led by the conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats, is in danger of failing to meet its 2030 climate targets, an agency tasked with evaluating climate policy recently reported.

According to the Swedish Climate Policy Council, the government has made decisions, including financial decisions, that will increase greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

“Ordinary people have to step up. Sweden is not the worst country but has been better previously,” 67-year-old pensioner Charlotte Bellander said.

The global movement, Mothers Rebellion, was established by a group of mothers in Sweden, Germany, the USA, Zambia and Uganda.

It organises peaceful movements in public spaces by sitting and singing but does not engage in civil disobedience, unlike the Extinction Rebellion movement, which some of its organisers came from.

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