Reporter, Søren Moon Vestergaard

Photographers, Peter Langkilde, Mathias Vejen, Marie Klareskov

Editor, Søren Klovborg

Horisont, DR News

Foreign Affairs

Danish Broadcasting Corporation

 

Greta and the Snowman

 

Hi I’m Greta Thunberg, I’m 16 years old and live in Stockholm, Sweden. I school strike for the climate outside of the Swedish Parliament every Friday until Sweden is aligned with the Paris agreement.

 

Many say that I should go to school instead, but why should I go to school and study for a future that soon might not exist? And what is the point of learning facts, when the most important facts don’t mean anything for our co-existence?

 

   up.

Now she has become a world sensation - she’s on a mission to save the climate.

 

Sb Only one kilometer left!

I sometimes feel powerless when I think about the climate changes, so I want to meet two of them who are in fact doing something.

Besides Greta Thunberg I search for a hermit who has been living in Gothic, Rocky Mountains for 46 years, and became a key figure for climate science.

 

Billy barr

Growing up I wanted to have a wife and kids and I was just so bad at it, so now I have something else which I really like.

 

HORISONT LOGO

 

The story begins

 

Greta Part One

 

SB Random guy: This is the place where the speech is? Greta: Yes.

 

COP representative: Greta, this is Matthew who will be interviewing you.. (want to shake hands)

 

Greta: My hands are wet!

 

December, COP 24, Katowice, Polen

 

Matthew:

So, Greta I think it’s gonna be very simple. You’ve probably seen the questions already.

 

Matthew: ..ask you how you found it so far, and maybe we’ll plunge in to your story if that’s alright with you?

 

Sb the whole thing should take no longer than 20 or 30 minutes, so it will be really super fast..  

 

Matthew: How you feeling? Good?

Greta: Yea.

 

Greta Thunberg is invited for UN’s climate conference.

 

200 nations must agree on how to keep the global warming down to 1,5 degrees.

Climate ministers, UNs general secretary and a school girl from Sweden.

 

Greta: The world’s leaders have known this for a long time, and chosen to ignore it!

 

Sb Matthew: So, my Swedish colleague has been helping me with your name!

Matthew: Would you be able to tell me if I’m doing it right?

 

M: How would you say it?

 

Greta: THUNBERRRGGJJJ!

M: Thuunberg?

G: RRrrrrgjj!!

M: Thunberg?

G: Yea.

 

M: That was rubbish, wasn’t it?

I think were good to go!

 

SB Matthew: I’m delighted to introduce to all of you Greta Thunberg!

 

Greta Thunberg:

I see almost everything black and white, and everyone says no questions are black and white, but climate change is actually black and white. Either we make the 1,5 degrees and reach the target, or we won’t. Either our civilisation prevail or it don’t. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.

 

Greta on stage:

There were some youth in the USA that refused to go to school because of the school shootings and then someone I knew said: what if children did that, but for the climate? And I thought that was a very good idea.

 

Sb Greta: I expected it to be more action and less talking.. It’s mostly just small talking.

 

Greta is a big hit on the conference.

 

Søren Moon, reporter: Greta just finished her interview with Australian tv. It is clear that all media, every journalist, every NGO wants to talk to her. Quite intense, but I think she is doing very well.

 

Media woman: If you can tell us: What the problem is? What you see as a problem? And how you can take climate action! And your message to them!

Sb You think you can do that? Greta: Yes.

Greta: Many people say that Sweden is just a small country and it doesn’t matter what we do. But I’ve learned you’re never too small to make a difference!

You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess.

You say, you love your children above all else, and yet you’re stealing their future in front of their very eyes!

 

TV lady, Austria: Keep on going.. To give us your visions! Your messages! Even whenever you’re annoyed about us, tell us!

 

She is an amazing story.

 

NGO person: You’ll be the best solution for this planet

 

She started her own quiet sit down for the climate, and now she famous all over the world.

 

Her dad Svante Thunberg drove her from Stockholm to Katowice, since everyone in the family stopped flying out of consideration to the climate.

 

Svante: Two more questions, real fast, now!

 

Svante: Hi.. sorry, we are in a hurry..

We need to move, we’re going to the World Bank and others, but we’ll see you, hi!

 

Svante: I take lots of pictures.

 

Svante: It’s very surreal, but I see that she’s doing good, and as long as she doing good, it’s okay. Then it’s almost like playing.

 

She is almost treated like she is an oracle.

 

Luisa Neubauer, young girl from the audience:

How do we communicate best that.. we cannot continue having cheap flights!

 

Greta:

If you higher the prices, then only the rich people will be able to afford flying and that is not sustainable either. It’s not going to make a difference if one person stops flying, but it makes other people think..

 

(delegates want selfies with Greta)

 

Random woman: It will be okay if I wait here?

G: Ask my dad!

Woman: Okay, where can I find him?

 

Moon: Is it strange that so many people want to talk to you?

 

Greta: Yes, it’s very strange because I have never been somebody who’s in focus, I have always been in the background, so when I end up in the spotlight, it’s weird.

 

I just have to remember that every attention I get, is attention on the climate. This is for something more important.

 

Greta:

It’s been very stressful today, so it will be good to come home and have a rest.

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

 

Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s Prime minister:

We are alarmed that current global efforts to combat climate are insufficient to limit global warming to 1,5 degrees.

 

We therefore urge the world to pursue all opportunities to maximize climate action including forest management, renewable energy

 

António Guterres, UN general secretary

There can be no doubt, that this is a moment of truth!

Gothic, Colorado

 

I have gone to Rocky Mountains, Colorado to visit a man with an extraordinary story.

He lives alone up on a mountain.

 

Moon: Luckily, Matt is here to guide us.

Matt Boyle: Sometimes you get stuck out there and cant even make it back in if you wanted to just because the danger is too high. Yea, it’s only skiing out, skiing back in!

Reporter: Now we’re going to billy’s - billy barr - he lives up there, even farther up on the mountain, quite isolated. We arrived yesterday, the weather was nice, there were sorta a trail we could follow, but now that trail is gone! It’s been snowing a lot last night.

(back pack on) Can’ wait to see how this goes.

So, we are going to see a man who has’nt exactly made it easy for visitors.

Now, if a 68 old man can do this route, so can we. That’s how i’m thinking :)

 

(struggling in the snow) It must be possible.

 Just like that, forward. Just one kilometer… piece of cake.

 

I reach billy barr in 2.900 meters altitude. I have read about him, that he has been measuring the snow for 46 years.

 

Billy barr:

I don’t feel like I’ve contributed a lot to the world, and I feel maybe this is my chance to do something, little bit.

 

Billy at the weather station

I’ll just stick a ruler in it to get a depth!

That gives me the amount of new snow, and this bucket is made to work on that scale.

Collect the snow in the bucket and then just simply put it on the scale, and the scale converts it’s weight into water.

So, then I get a read out and that tells me how much water was in that much snow.

It’s not a very elaborate weather station because I started it all on my own, just doing with what I had which was a ruler.. pretty much

 

Moon: I brought you some tea from Copenhagen

Billy: Oh, thank you!

Billy’s mom passed away when he was three years old, and he had a difficult time growing up as a young man.

 

Billy

I grew up in Trenton, New Jersey which is a nice, old inner city.. I had a lot of difficulties living there.. I didn’t fit in to the male culture, put it that way, and I was extremely unhappy. I really wanted to meet a woman and I was terrible at it!

 

In 1972 when he was 22, he got a job in a mining company in Colorado and moved from the city to the isolated life in the mountains.

 

Billy

Clear the snow off around it.. put it on the scale.. that tells me

 

To have something to do, he started writing down notes.

 

billy: I started just writing down the daily weather, and that’s all it was, it was entertaining, but after five years..(it was the fifth year, it got to be saturday evening and so) I took the winter I was in then, and I went back to my notebooks, and compared that winter to all the other winters. And I kept doing that year after year.

SB These are my books. I think this is my first one.. November ‘73.

18th okay.

There was 61 inches of snow on the ground at sunset that day, so the low was actual minus 15. And the high was minus 3,5.

 

Sb: Sunrise, sunset, date, you know this much snow.. And so on and the temperatures, the cloud, cover and the wind..

 

billy: Just a hobby, something that was interesting and kept me, gave me something to do.

 

And the longer I did it, the more interesting it became!

 

Back then - more than 40 years ago - he didn’t know that his snow data one day would be important for the climate science.

 

billy: February used to be a very winter cold month and it’s become mild.

Things need to change pretty fast!

 

Stockholm, Sweden

 

Sb Moon: Good morning. How are you this morning?

Today i’m gonna be here till 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Thermo with tea cos it’s so cold, sleeping bag if i’m gonna need it, and something to sit on.

Greta: Good morning.. hi!

Greta heard about CO2 emissions for the first time when she was 8 years old. And it made her sad.

Greta:

I got depressed. I was 11, depressed and stopped eating, stopped talking.

You stopped talking?

Yes, I only spoke with my parents and my sister, no one else.

Moon: But why not?

G: I dunno, I was depressed, I thought no one was speaking about the climate, pretended it wasnt a problem, so I realized things were really bad, and I got depressed and didn’t feel like talking.

 

I was diagnosed with Asperger, OCD and selective mutism. OCD is a compulsive disorder, I don’t have that so much any more, and selective mutism means that I choose not to speak, I only speak when it is very necessary. That you don’t small talk.

 

Svante: It’s difficult when your child’s not well and can’t go to school. You loose all social relations, and you can’t work. It would take 2,5 hours for her to finish a meal.

SB Greta: This is me with mom and dad.

Greta: I think we’re in France here. My mom, she was an opera singer and we followed her around when she sang concerts, since dad was working from home he could take us around.

Greta was not in school for a full year, and her depression lasted from she was 11 to 14.

 

I came back from my depression, I thought I shouldn’t be depressed, cos why should I be that when life’s so short.

 

There are things that need to be done,

and someone needs to do them.

 

They need to be done to make

the world a better place.

 

So, I used the anger and hopelessness from the depression as a drive to do something.

 

If I hadn’t had my Asperger diagnosis, I probably wouldn’t have noticed what’s wrong with the system. I probably would have been stock in the social norms, not able to see through the lies that everybody accepts.

 

One of my olds school friends was

on the reality TV show 'Wild Kids',

she was a bit of a

celebrity at the time,

people would stop her

to have photos taken.

 

 

Back to billy

 

billy:

I was just really depressed and I got out here and it’s not like it was TADAAA everything’s great, but it was a relief!

 

I knew it the first day here, it didn’t make me happy right away, it took years, but I just knew that this was a place that was really good for me, and it was. (11 sek.)

 

The house was built in stages.

 

First, he lived in a then, then in a shack before he moved in to his house, which is self sustainable with power and heat.

 

billy Two sorta electrical systems, one small one that powers my one of my cameras and my internet, and my weather station. And the other one powers my whole house.

 

Billy: The first year I had one solar panel and one battery, so I ran one light which was a big improvement, for eight years I used kerosene lamp.

STATE OF COLORADO

 

The state of Colorado supplies other parts of the States with water.

 

The water comes from the snow in Rocky Mountains with melts in to the rivers.

 

But even her in the snow covered mountains you see the effect of global warming.

 

The area has an interesting wildlife and scientists from all over the world come her to study the ecosystems.

 

Ian Billick:

Understanding the snow and when the snow melts off is really critical to understanding a lot of the biological systems.

 

Ian Billick:

As the temperature is getting warmer, the low elevations are melting out earlier. And once the bare ground is exposed.. even if we get a late snowstorm it melts right of..

Very dramatic changes in the insects live in the pond, even wildflowers.

 

In 1990 a local biologist learned about billys snow data, and the scientist began to analyze the large collection of research.

 

Ian Billick:

We’ve got the world’s largest collection of long term field studies, looking af wildflowers, looking at streams, and we can relate what he learns about snow to all of this other work that’s being done.

 

Ian Billick: If we want to understand how the world’s changing in ways that matter to people all around the world, it’s the best data that we have! It’s a historical record that can never be replaced!

 

Today billy has a job as an accountant for the local scientists.

 

Billy Wind recorded at 95 miles an hour in Crested Butte, that was a fun day!!

 

Measuring the snow is something he does for free.

 

billy

Two winters ago, this time we had about.. 225-230 centimeters, last winter it never got deeper than a 104 all winter long.

 

The snow is deep enough now..

 

billy  

What I’ve learned long term is…simplified a bit, there’s an obvious change in temperature!

We’re getting more record highs, few records lows, warmer average temperatures!

Animal population is changing!

 

I see a chichitiee there..

 

Billy barr has built the house himself with some help.

 

billy:

One thing about the house, this used to be.. I built this, this would be the way I came into the house in the winter. I turned it into a refrigerator.

This is my current refrigerator.. And it works better than anything I ever had.

 

There is no water in the house, so billy used snow water for the plants.

But her prefers to get clean to drink from the nearby mountain village.

 

Billy: I’m not gonna run out of water, but they’ll run out of it in Arizona, in New Mexico and Mexico and Southern California cos they get it from here and we getting less of if.

 

Back to Greta

 

The 20th of August she sat in front of the Swedish parliament for the first time, all alone.

 

Greta: I tried to bring people with me, but noone was really interested, so I had to do it alone.

 

She uses twitter and Instagram to spread her message.

 

 

Greta is on doing her school strike number 21.

 

Svante: Now, it’s like her special needs are gone. Like the problems that came with her Asperger diagnosis they’re almost all gone.

Greta: Now more than 100.000 followers!

 

Svante:

She’s back in a normal school, for three years she went to a school for kids with Asperger, and autism, and that didn’t work. But now she’s back in a normal school. It is almost the a fairytale, too good to be true.

She has been accused of being paid and controlled by organisations, she has been bullied and has felt political pressure.

PM, Scott Morrison: Kids should go to school! That’s what we’re committed to! We don’t support the idea of kids not going to school to participate in things that can be dealt with outside of schooll!

But Greta keep going..

 

Lucie Bolton: I strongly think that politicians and leaders of this country aren’t actually doing enough to help stop climate change.

 

SB: Everyone who jumps wants a future!

 

Her school strike has started a chain reaction.

 

Journalist: Shouldn’t you be in school? No, we should be here and support the battle for the climate.

 

Friday for.. FUTURE.. Friday for…? FUTURE

German girl: It’s cool that such a young girl really speaks up!

 

Anuna De Wever:

This is all for her, for the movement, for the climate. She started this! I just wanted to help her a little bit.

 

Greta reads comments: Go on! Friday champ! You’re so inspiring! Full support! You’re very brave! You’re a wonderful example”

 

Greta: It’s in many languages! Some comments are in spanish, some are in icelandic. So, it’s pretty wild, it has spread all over the world.

Back to billy

See, I like ginger, so I know i’d be good.

Billy is mostly minding his own business and routines.

By himself.

 

Moon: Do you ever miss having your own family?

Billy: Oh yea. Yeah, this is the way things turned out, I mean.. at some point it was just easier.. Maybe easier is not the right word, “healthier” almost just to live out here and switch gears, sort of.

 

I miss it, and I regret it, but it worked out for the best, because I was incredibly unhappy and I have no idea where that would have gone, but it was just nice to get out here.  

 

He hope he live here and work the weather station for at least ten more years.

 

Ian Billick:

He’s someone that can convey how the world’s changing. A climate scientist that works with technical piece of equipment that measures carbon levels, that can be hard to understand, a little abstract. But billy brings not just great science and the data he’s collected, but he also brings a story that people can connect to personally.

 

Reporter: So if that happens and somebody will take over. How would that make you feel?

Billy: I’ll be dead! I won’t feel a thing!

 

Soundbite billy: There’s a dance scene in this movie kinda fun

 

Moon: But you’ll be smiling from above?

Billy: Well above or below, that’s a whole different subject.. haha!

 

I say goodbye to billy barr at his house where he’s been measuring the snow every sunrise and sunset every winter in 46 years.

 

billy:

I would hope that it would continue.  

 

What a magnificent life.

 

Davos, Switzerland

 

Grafik: World Economic Forum, Davos, Schweiz

 

Greta has moved on to the summit in Davos.

Sometimes I wish I had time to do other stuff, but this is so important, and it’s also good to have things to do, and speak up.

The best thing that has happend in this period of time is that people have been inspired by my actions and now doing the same thing. People have supported me, all over the world, and that gives me hope.

Journalist: What are you gonna tell them the powerful people here?

Greta: That they have failed!

 

Greta.

Look how some school kids got the whole world’s attention. Image what we could do if we all joined forces.

 

The end