The Man Who Launched Greta

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Those Critics Are Missing a Distinction · Climate Clown for Palestine? Or Does "Doom Goblin" Have a Point? · New blog on the kid: The Man Who Launched Greta

In international media, it's described like her mother and "the CEO of a green company" put her onto the climate strikes. Bo Thorén was actually leading, back then, a non-profit, named Fossilfritt Dalsland.

What's Dalsland? Latin spells it Dalia, not to be confused with Dalecarlia, Latin and English for Dalarne.

It's a rural area of Sweden. A historic province, with it's largest town, Åmål, immortalised by the film Show Me Love, which had 9,065 inhabitants in 2010. If your biggest town has 9,065 people and the perhaps second biggest, Bengtsfors (Bennet's Rush) has something like 3000, you can in modern times qualify the area as pretty rural. Laon in France has more than twice that number of inhabitants, and even so, Aisne is rural (and actually, Laon is third after Saint-Quentin and Soissons). So, Dalsland is rural.

The sentiment in these rural areas is like: "we don't have big ports, we don't have fancy museums, our schools tend to end before university" (Campus Dalsland exists, but I think its affiliated to other Universities and Folkhögskolor, the latter being a less prestigious and more popular form of higher education) "we can't go to big cinemas, we don't feed tourists in big restaurants, the one thing we have is nature and lots of it, so LET'S KEEP THAT CLEAN" ... to Bo Thorén, that meant starting a non-profit to rid Dalia of Fossil Fuels. On one journey to Stockholm (as lobbyist) he met Greta.

Dalslänning bakom Greta Thunbergs skolstrejk
Publicerat tisdag 8 januari 2019 kl 13.33
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/7127615

Now, she explained what she was upset about and wanted to change. He suggested to get all of the school into a school strike. His inspiration for the method was this story:

Students from MSDHS were instrumental in helping organize nationwide student protests following the shooting, and in spurring the revision of Florida law, on March 4, 2018, to raise the legal rifle-owner age from 18 to 21, with a three-day wait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjory_Stoneman_Douglas_High_School

Just because you are from a place with less than 500 inhabitants sharing a church doesn't mean you don't follow world news. Apart from banning fossil fuels from public transports where you live, and hunting and fishing, that's one of the things you actually can do. And many also do. I've been in a village about that size, and a man who had been in UN troops in the Balkans had a poster about US having Bill Clinton and Bob Hope, Sweden having whoever the PM was back then and "no hope" ... yes, people in very far off villages do have opinions on US politics. Not too often to the right as mine are in my experience.

Since this happened, Fridays for the Future became a charity and it has financed its activities as a charity. Not unlike Fossilfritt Dalsland.

Speculating it must have some very globalist sponsors is missing the point. Even if Soros had given a donation, he has (very certainly) given to the Red Cross, doesn't mean everyone's suspecting the Red Cross.

There was an image of her* with Soros, but it was a composite image, the person originally with Soros being Al Gore. She has been associated with Aileen Getty, heir of a petrol company, with a fund called Climate Emergency Fund, but that fund denied financing Fridays for the Future. Presumably as exclusive financer, since a photo of Greta is featured on their site. Presumably Aileen Getty at one point gave a donation.

I would say, an heiress having bad conscience for what the ones assembling the riches she had is a far cry from a much richer billionaire (originally) who invests in cause after cause and whom many fear as running the politics of the planet, namely Soros. But very obviously, even Aileen Getty was absent when Fridays for the Future were launched. Bo Thorén had nothing like her resources.

I don't agree on all their programme, I simply think hysteria about them is very overblown. And sometimes actually dehumanising to Greta Thunberg and totally ignorant of how Sweden actually works on some important levels. We are not a third world country, where 90 % of the population depend on being very ambitious and hardworking to even make ends meet. A luxury investment, if you like to think of it like that (and it pretty much looks like that to lots of people in the suburbs of our big cities where immigrants go) which doesn't immediately make money for yourself or your family is not an everyday decision, but it's also very far from unthinkable.

It's not like someone doing this kind of thing must have very big backers, and if you can't identify them, they must be very secretive on top of very big. Nope. It's much more like a few bands that became famous on the grounds of a farm owned by Max Yasgur. Most of them poorer than he, and most of them financing their own rehearsals. Not all of those still extant, but even those that flopped the next few years don't regret the experience. Unless they do it because they did something stupid on some other level than economics.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Peter, Bishop of Compostela
10.IX.2025

Compostellae sancti Petri Episcopi, qui multis virtutibus et miraculis claruit.

* Sources for the picture info and some others:

Forbes: Exclusif : Révélations Sur L’Argent De Greta Thunberg
Yves Derai | 17 août 2020
https://www.forbes.fr/politique/exclusif-revelations-sur-largent-de-greta-thunberg/

As per that date, in her words:

"Sometimes I support or cooperate with several NGOs which work for the climate and environment. But I'm absolutely independent, I do it as a volunteer, I receive no money or promise of profit from anyone. [...] My parents pay tickets and lodging."

Since then, I think she has an NGO of her own, so as to tax her parents less.