The 15-year-old student Greta Thunberg gained world fame as an environmental activist in a couple of weeks during 2018 after her school climate strike. However, it seems that her discovery and transformation into an iconic figure was no coincidence at all. Her mother s book was published just three days after newspapers began writing about Greta, and the person who "discovered" her made 1 million euros (10 million Swedish crowns) in profit thanks to Greta s name.

Greta Thunberg was born in Stockholm in 2003. Her mother is an opera singer, famous in Sweden, while her father is an actor and manager. Greta gained fame in August 2018 when she demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament holding up a sign calling on decision makers to take more efficient actions against climate change. At that time, she did not attend school for about three weeks to voice her opinion before the elections, as she was too young to vote. Greta grew world famous in a few weeks and has turned into one of the main icons of climate protection, who has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the European Parliament and the United States Congress.

From the outset, however, her rapidly rising career was guided by experts whose goal was not climate protection but using the situation to do some lucrative business.

Greta Thunberg s mother, Malena Ernman is an opera singer and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. She gained countrywide fame in 2009, when she represented Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow.

Malena Ernman s book, which offers readers an insight into the life of her family, was published in 2018. In the book, Ernman describes how the family lived while they toured Europe because of her singing career, and how they coped with Greta s Asperger syndrome and the younger girl, Beata s attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) while travelling. She also explaines how their lives have changed thanks to environmental protection.

Greta s mother and sister, Beata attended a conference on climate change in May 2018, where one of the speakers was Ingmar Rentzhog. Later it was Rentzhog who „accidentally” found Greta demonstrating on her own outside the Swedish parliament.

Rentzhog is a recognised PR specialist, who founded his company We Don t Have Time, a social media platform, in 2017. The company s mission is to build an international network for climate protection. Initially, Rentzhog denied any previous contacts with the Thunbergs and claimed that he only discovered Greta, because he received information about her strike from a mailing list. However, later he admitted having met Greta s mother at the conference.

Eventually, it was Rentzhog who gave news of Greta to the world on 20 August, 2018 when he posted the photo of the girl fighting against climate change on her own on his company s social media sites.

The press quickly circulated Greta s story, and she was joined by an increasing number of people, including Rentzhog.

Interestingly, Greta s mother Malena Ernman s book was published three days after the newspapers started to write about Greta generating even wider publicity for the book.

The book was later translated to several languages, some published with Greta Thunberg s name on the front cover. Moreover, the cover of the German edition featured Greta s picture instead of Ernman s.

Greta continued her daily protest in front of the Swedish Parliament until 9 September, the day of the election in Sweden, and every Friday thereafter. More and more people have come to know her. She became a celebrity, a „symbol of the climate fight”.

In this period, life became busier for both Greta and Rentzhog s company. In September We Don t Have Time started to use posters with Greta on them after her strike in August.

From November 2018 Thunberg became a member of the advisory board of We Don t Have Time. Rentzhog continued to use her name to publicise his company. The name carried considerable PR-value by that time, attracting investors for the company s IPO on 27 November. The company promised its investors to generate a large return, owing to the viral videos and ads on their social networking sites.

When the deal and the enormous revenue were revealed, Greta s father told the press that they had known nothing about the events. However, several coincidences, the meeting between Greta s mother and Rentzhog, the discovery of Greta and the media attention before the publication of the book about Greta s family, shed a different light on the story of the young climate activist.