Greta Thunberg’s school strike works

On two occasions this year, interest in the climate has been greater than ever before: mid-March and now in September. The first was when Greta :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0} went on school strike, the second was her journey to the United States. The data is unequivocal.

There are many opinions about what Greta should and should not do. Personally, I can only conclude that this is working. If the goal is to raise interest in the climate, she has achieved it. The data shows this clearly. In March this year, interest in the climate surpassed interest in fashion for the first time in terms of what we search for. Traditionally, fashion is a much larger segment in the search results.

The same pattern can also be seen in the United States, where there is a peak in connection with Greta Thunberg’s trip. The fastest-growing climate-related searches by volume right now are found there:

However, not everyone in Sweden is equally interested. It is clear that northern Sweden is not nearly as affected by Greta as, for example, the Stockholm region. Västerbotten and Norrbotten do stand out with slightly higher demand than the other northern counties, but compared to more southern counties the interest is still lukewarm. Below is demand by county.

The range between counties is wide (the figures are weighted as a total share of the number of searches in the area on a scale from 1 to 100, where 100 is the highest). Residents of Västernorrland and Jämtland are only half as interested as those living in Södermanland County. I do not dare to speculate on why this is the case.

About the data

All data in the article comes from Google Trends and is available to review there.