Greta Thunberg doesn’t consider herself to be a ‘celebrity or icon’

The activist says she doesn’t think she will be ‘this interesting for long’

Greta Thunberg has said she doesn’t consider herself to be “a celebrity or an icon”.

The schoolgirl climate change activist has risen to prominence in the media in recent months after she began to skip school to protest about climate change outside Sweden’s parliament last August.

Earlier this year, Thunberg visited the UK Houses of Parliament where she delivered a speech in which she said her future had been “stolen” and told Extinction Rebellion protesters that they were “making a difference”.

However, despite the media attention surrounding the teenager, the Swedish student says she doesn’t consider herself famous.

"I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that...I have not really done anything,” she told Wired UK magazine.

Thunberg’s comments come after she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in March. A month later, TIME magazine listed her on its list of the 100 influential people of 2019 among the likes of Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, former first lady Michelle Obama, and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

While Thunberg is aware of her prominence in the media, she knows that her time in the limelight will be short lived.

“I am not going to be this interesting for long. This attention is soon going to fade out, but I just hope that the attention sticks to the movement,” she told the publication.

The activist also revealed the number of careers she envisaged she’d do as an adult when she was a child, including becoming an astronaut, actor, and singer.

“It is so hard to find something and decide what I want because I want to do so much,” she said of being an activist.

(Reuters)

“But I realised that if you don't care about the climate then the other things won’t matter in the future.”

Opening up about her fight to raise awareness of climate change, Thunberg added that she will continue protesting for action “even if there is no hope”.

“Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something. Everyone says different things,” she said.

“Some say we are already screwed and some say we still have time. I just hope that this movement will continue and we do something about the climate - because that is the only thing that matters.”

Earlier this year, the climate change activist explained how the “gift” of living with Asperger syndrome helps her “see things from outside the box” when it comes to climate change.

In an interview with presenter Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in April, Thunberg said the disorder helps her see things in “black and white”.

“It makes me different, and being different is a gift, I would say,” she told Robinson.

“It also makes me see things from outside the box. I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.”

See the full feature in WIRED UK July/August Issue, available on newsstands and digital download Thursday 6 June.