• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Friday, June 2, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

Is What Thunberg and Her Fellow Climate Strikers Want So Extreme?

Roger Jones by Roger Jones
09/13/19
in Opinion
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on board the Malizia II sailing yacht

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Photo: Ben Stanstall, AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

At 16, I was an exchange student. That meant traveling from Australia to another country, giving talks, acting as an ambassador, and engaging in cultural exchange. Admittedly the other country was America, so the cultural difference was hardly huge. I got to live with oil people who were really welcoming, but at 16, I was already aware of the damage fossil fuels could do. I wanted to do something about it in my professional life.

Sending 16-year-olds halfway across the world to act as youth ambassadors has been going on for decades. In the United States, you can drive a car at 16. Sometimes, through unfortunate circumstances, people of 16 and younger become family breadwinners.

So, for a cohort of conservative, mainly male commentators, advocates, and politicians to claim that 16-year-old celebrated climate striker Greta Thunberg is only a child, vulnerable to outside influence, and manipulated by shadowy forces who want to bring down civilization, is an insult, both to her and to the issue of climate change.

"The marauding swarm of vitriolic right-wing climate change deniers see Greta as a tiny, pretentious zealot who threatens the existing order. Their order. Their comforts. Their traditional 'way of life.'" — writes Andrew Mitrovica for #AJOpinion https://t.co/31vzvwBV0e

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 1, 2019

One conservative commentator referred to the young Swede as a “deeply disturbed messiah” and stated he had never seen “a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru.” Another attacked her voice as monotone and delivery as chilling and cult-like. This to discount her warnings of “hellfire,” by claiming she had been taken over by doomsday green cults.

Is what Thunberg and her fellow climate strikers want so extreme?

Demanding Action

When I began my career some 35 years ago, the material side of society was improving, but the ecological side was already in decline from exploitation and over-consumption. The big worry back then, beyond the concern for nature itself, was reaching the point when ecological decline became large enough so that society’s material wellbeing would follow.

Ironically, social wellbeing in most developed countries is already in decline. Not yet due to ecological collapse, but because the cracks are beginning to appear. Fractured politics and poor governance are indicators, yet these signals are being smothered by the silence of inaction.

Young people know they won’t inherit a better world if it stays on its current path. How can the average young person saddled with educational debt, facing declining wages in a gig economy in a world 2°C, 3°C, or 4°C warmer going through the sixth great extinction expect to be better off than their parents?

It is reasonable to demand the adults in the room not allow this to happen. But politicians are telling the striking students to go back to school and to let them handle it. Promoting fracking, coal mining, gas, and oil, that is.

While Thunberg is the face of the movement, as she reminds us, young people have been imploring adults to step up and to make the change for years. This denigration of both messenger and message to preserve privilege, power, and patriarchy is widespread and systemic.

Sinister Turn

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, is being derided as being too young and inexperienced. She is one of the most focused and direct communicators the hill has seen in years, and the Green New Deal, introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey, is mocked as fantasy.

Amid this verbal violence, things are taking an even more sinister turn. In the Australian state of Queensland, for instance, environmental activism is being legislated against by using laws meant to counter terrorism. Environmental and human rights group Global Witness says 164 environmental defenders were killed worldwide in 2018. The most powerful democracy (in name) in the world, the United States, is being run by a president who has called climate change a “hoax” multiple times.

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

In this upside-down world, the children are adults, and the adults are children.

All this, to maintain the status quo, which is sowing the seeds of its own impending destruction.

Creative Destruction

When the economist Joseph Schumpeter used the term “creative destruction” in 1942, he thought the economy would reach equilibrium and stagnate. We now know that when economies stagnate, they collapse under their own excess. Schumpeter suggested creative destruction through innovation and change as a way out of this.

Under climate change, power structures will change whether we like it or not. The climate strikers know this and want a say in how they will change.

The choice we have is to engage in the type of creative destruction that fuels transformation or wait for the chaotic destruction that kicks in when systems fail.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Roger Jones

Roger Jones

Researching climate risk and the economics of green infrastructure at the Victoria Institute for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University

Related Posts

This aerial photograph taken on May 6, 2023 shows a landslide that engulfed Nyamukubi village, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
National

Toll From DR Congo Floods Rises to Nearly 400: Official

by Staff Writer
May 8, 2023
A flooded road in Batu Berendam in Malaysia's southern coastal state of Malacca
Environment

At Least Four Dead, Tens of Thousands Evacuated in Malaysia Floods

by Staff Writer
March 6, 2023
deforestation
Environment

Major Firms Not Doing Enough to Curb Deforestation: Report

by Staff Writer
February 15, 2023
People cool off with a fountain's water during a heat wave in Seville, Spain
Environment

UN Confirms 2022 Among Eight Hottest Years on Record

by Staff Writer
January 13, 2023
Shell
Environment

Greenpeace Sues UK Government Over Shell Gas Field

by Staff Writer
July 27, 2022
Joe Biden
Environment

Biden Vows Climate Action as Heat Waves Slam US, Europe

by Staff Writer
July 20, 2022
Next Post
US students march with Greta Thunberg in Washington DC to demand action on climate change. Photo: Bryan Bowman/ The Globe Post

Thunberg Brings Student Climate Strike to White House

A Myanmar border guard

600,000 Rohingya Still in Myanmar at 'Serious Risk of Genocide:' UN

Recommended

Migrants waiting at the Turkish border.

Beyond Numbers: Confronting Europe’s Broken Border System

May 30, 2023
A noose is seen on makeshift gallows as supporters of US President Donald Trump gather on the West side of the US Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021

Militia Leader Gets 18 Years in Prison Over US Capitol Attack

May 26, 2023
Customers queue to enter a re-opened Zara clothes shop

EU Targets Fast Fashion in Push for Durable Goods

May 23, 2023
A billboard showing the debt limit is seen in Washington, D.C.

US Republicans Upbeat on Prospects for Debt Deal

May 19, 2023
Military hardware rolls through Dvortsovaya Square during a Victory Day military parade in central Saint Petersburg

Pressing Russia, US Shares Nuclear Warhead Data Under Treaty

May 16, 2023
A man holding a gun

The NRA’s Continuing Agenda of Fear

May 12, 2023

Opinion

Migrants waiting at the Turkish border.

Beyond Numbers: Confronting Europe’s Broken Border System

May 30, 2023
A man holding a gun

The NRA’s Continuing Agenda of Fear

May 12, 2023
US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

A Supreme Folly 

April 24, 2023
Transgender Army veteran Tanya Walker speaks to protesters in Times Square near a military recruitment centre

Tennessee Is A Drag on the First Amendment

March 26, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping

China’s Path to Economic Dominance

March 15, 2023
An earthquake survivor reacts as rescuers look for victims and other survivors in Hatay, a Turkish province where hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the earthquake

Heed the Call of Our Broken World

March 1, 2023
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post