All grown up (Tim Whitby/Getty Images)
Greta Thunberg has never been a party animal. In a 2021 podcast, she said she had never been in a bar, spending “all my waking hours when I am not in school constantly working and being an activist”. She also said she had no desire to ever get drunk as this is “not who I am as a person”. So when she turned 21 on Wednesday, it feels safe to say that celebrations won’t have been raucous. And there definitely won’t have been candles — just think of the carbon footprint.
It’s easy for jaundiced old gits like me to laugh at the serious-minded puritanism of today’s youth. But Thunberg seems to arouse far stronger and darker emotions in many than a desire to gently take the mick. On the one hand, there are those who fawn excessively, treating her as a tiny omniscient oracle. And on the other are the people for whom the mere mention of her name leaves them purple with fury, putting them in mind of everything they hate about modern progressivism.
Many of her most ardent fans in the first group are well into middle age, and their veneration is frankly a bit weird. Take the 40-something British novelist Elizabeth Day, interviewing Thunberg for the aforementioned podcast with cringing deference, describing herself as a “stan”, and introducing her interviewee to listeners as “a global icon, an inspiration to millions, and still only 19”. At one point, Day exclaims covetously: “I wish I had your mind”.
Meanwhile, in a scene from the 2020 documentary I Am Greta, MPs Ed Miliband, Layla Moran, Caroline Lucas and John Bercow cluster round the awkwardly unsmiling youngster in Parliament. Almost genuflecting, Moran prevails upon Thunberg for a selfie, while Bercow, ignoring her evident discomfort, stares into her eyes and pumps her hand for just a little bit too long. In a scene shortly afterwards, the Pope does pretty much exactly the same thing.
Newton’s Third Law tells us that for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction; and this seems to be true in the cultural world just as much as in the natural one. Accordingly, Thunberg has acquired many detractors, particularly among Right-leaning politicians and commentators with aspirations to populism. Perhaps some are envious of her influence; others see political opportunity in bashing a soft and easily mockable target. A number of her most prominent critics in the documentary also come across as somewhat unhinged. Trump encourages supporters at a rally to boo her. Bolsonaro calls her a “brat”, while the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles calls her “a mentally ill Swedish child”.
Yet it is clear to anyone not already lost in projection that neither the adulation nor the demonisation is warranted. Whether or not you agree with Thunberg’s conclusions about the environment, she is usually just repeating activist talking points inherited from other people. The school strike which kicked off her fame was the idea of a different Swedish campaigner, and the resulting publicity was not particularly grassroots, but due to a well-connected media entrepreneur. And given the history of horrible bullying and social isolation which dogged her in early puberty — eventually causing her to become anorexic, depressed and selectively mute — avoiding school to protest climate injustice can’t really have been that much of an altruistic sacrifice. Whenever she goes off-piste from environmental matters, as she did last month on Palestine, here too she says exactly the sorts of things you’d expect from the average Left-leaning young person these days, complete with preferred pronouns.
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SubscribeThunberg has acquired many detractors, particularly among Right-leaning politicians and commentators with aspirations to populism.
A perfectly ridiculous sentence. It has become evident that each Unherd article must have at least one. I think “aspirations to populism” is the real low point.
To me it seemed a totally valid, and true, statement.
What part of that sentence do you disagree with?
You don’t need to be “right wing” to decide Thunbergs parroting of convenient model-based predictions needs to be heavily criticised.
The label “right wing” has become the go-to term for left-wing authors to use when the population at large disagree with them.
“Right wing” or “populist”. So overused, so misused.
And the label ‘progressive’ has become the go-to term for right-wing authors to use when the population at large disagree with them!
The difference is that Progressives proudly declare that name to describe themselves. I’m not aware of many people who self describe using a pejorative like “right wing”.
Are “left wing” or “far left” terms that many apply to themselves? Because that is the proper one-to-one comparison.
Liberal is surely used in a hollowed-out or overbroad sense about as often as Conservative too, with a shifting balance depending on location. Here at UnHerd, cheap disparagement of anything to the left of the right-middle is far more common than the reverse. In “mainstream media” except Fox News (very mainstream, the most popular on cable) and a few other places, the reverse is true.
One-sidedness is in the eye and ear of the beholder. Terminological drift goes every which way.
If you used the label ‘snowflake’ you might be nearer the truth. As it is, you are not correct!
You’re correct that you don’t need to be, but I think we’ll all agree it’s generally those on the right of the political spectrum that do so?
Wrong again Billy Boy, since no one seems to agree with you.
It makes a refreshing change from being called a conspiracy theorist.
I think some people just have a hair trigger for certain key terms. Unfortunately that leads them off on witch hunts as soon as they see the bad word(s). It also leads them away from the topic of discussion, which is a sad waste.
I have my opinions, and I’m happy to read opposing views here and elsewhere, as long as they’re expressed politely – or at least entertainingly. I’m certainly secure enough to let others differ, and having seen many of your comments, I think that goes for you too.
My hair trigger is just lazy use of the English language by Unherd contributors.
What was lazy about it? I’m struggling to think of two many on the left that personally attack Thurnberg in the same way as several on the right tend to do, so to me the description of those doing it is broadly accurate.
I never understand why those that lean right get so upset about being labelled right wing. Many of my views are would lean right on the political spectrum so it makes sense to describe them as such
The term right-leaning is not an exact synonym* for right-wing, Mr. Bob. Perhaps that’ll become more clear after comparing left-leaning with left-wing.
*Or even a near synonym: Compare “off-center” with “extreme”.
So some people are further away from the political centre than others? I still fail to see what it is exactly people are complaining about
The prefix “far” and the suffix “wing”. The majority, who dwell between the outer fringes on most issues, understandably dislike such terms being flung their way. You may see or hear “wing” as synonymous with “side”, but I’m with those who hear “outermost point” or “fringe”. Granted, some people are just complaining as a reflex, or because they have a very skewed idea of terminological fairness: nuance and benefit of the doubt for me; none for thee.
Spot on! Whenever one has a view or opinion, on anything, one should seek out opposing views in order to test the validity of one’s own. Sadly the interweb’s algorithms, and internal biases, militate against that far too often.
Cheers. To the extent your self-assessment is accurate–and I’ve seen nothing to contradict it–your frame of mind is in increasingly short supply. Even here at UnHerd.
I disagree with the whole sentence, not just part of it. What does “right leaning politicians” mean? Those who disagree with the whole climate hoax, opposing to rely on disastrously expensive intermittent solar and wind energy. They refuse to believe that renewable energy will take us into a new bright future, where Climate miraculously won’t change anymore and will be subdued to our will like an imaginary global thermostat.
And why name them “Commentators with aspiration to populism”? In my opinion they are realists, who are concerned, that the future of our children will be bleak without proper and plenty of energy, which is so far based on fossil fuels, until some scientists will discover a new source of reliable cheap alternatives.
Right leaning politicians means politicians whose views generally lean to the right rather than the left, I’d have thought that much was blindingly obvious.
As for populism we all know what is meant by it, even if the dictionary definition doesn’t always tally up exactly with that meaning. The same is true of Liberals who often propose policies that are decidedly illiberal, and calling Thatcher a Conservative when she set out to conserve absolutely nothing.
These words are used imperfectly at times but if you wanted the writer to break down every description of every leanings of every political group each article would be 50 pages long
The term ‘right leaning’ is virtually never used. The term ‘far right’ or ‘extreme right’ is the go-to expression even when describing moderate conservatives. It tends to be used, almost universally as a perjorative or inflammatory term.
I disagree . It’s a perfectly reasonable description. It doesn’t apply to all right-leaning politicians, nor to those (often right-leaning) who genuinely hold political convictions that chime with the masses.
‘Aspirations to populism’ refers to politicians who support populist political ideas, not because of a deeply-held conviction but because they think that doing so will increase their chances of becoming popular and hence powerful.
Keir Starmer is an obvious example of a man with ‘aspirations to populism’: apparently willing to demonstrate his support for almost anything that will win him votes. This leads to some spectacular inconsistencies, regular u-turns and much unattractive toadying to the masses.
Nigel Farage is not: one gets the feeling he would still be vehemently pro-Brexit even if he were the only person in the country to feel that way.
Trump? A bit of both, I’d guess.
That’s it exactly.
Well done for deconstructing the Myth of Sisyphus.
In the sentence it referred to ‘commentators’ not politicians.
not even sure what ‘aspirations to populism’ really means in this context..
Welcome back!
Of course there are aspirations to populism, whatever people say, left or right populism. But also well balanced critique. From left and right.
She has adulators, not out of spite or irony? Living, breathing humans who think Greta isn’t a complete fabrication and disingenuous hypocrite manipulated by conniving and overbearing parents? Cripes!
As an environmentalist who neither worshipped or hated Greta I just wish her the best going forward. Thankfully the focus on her has ended.
Glad that the article pointed out that the worship of Greta was adults refusing to adult. In so many ways society in the West is letting our kids down. Let kids be kids and let the adults deal with environmental and other issues.
Adults refuse to adult, children refuse to child, articles refuse to article, the West refuses to West. Finally things are obvious.
They’re obviousing.
Things are refusing to thing…
Nouns verbing . . .
Is there no end to this insaniting?
Ends refusing to end ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Fair comment: I quite agree. I’ve squirmed with embarrassment and fervently wished, for a long time, that people would just leave her alone to do her thing and learn her own lessons, as we all must.
Her parents thrust their autistic child into the global spotlight for money and fame. Whatever becomes of her starts with them.
Thank you. I’m surprised Kathleen didn’t address this in the article. The parents, the so called adults in Greta’s life, are aberrant teenagers themselves who never grew up and haven’t still. Quite pathetic really.
Or maybe not, maybe they saw a way to make money and appear saintly at the same time by using their child for the purpose. I wonder if they got what they wanted out of it.
An extended 15 minutes of fame and lots and lots of cash so yes they probably did get precisely what they wanted out of it.
Funny, I was convinced she came out of test tube in Wuhan.
The WOKE KID virus.
There are basically two Gretas- the one who symbolises all that is good and noble about environmentalism and the real life three dimensional one that Kathleen has accurately described. Too many confuse the two. It was when a new director joined the place I work at and was asked to describe his hero and he said Greta Thunbberg, I knew he was a wrong ‘un.
“Adult” is not a verb.
”Adults”… could mean Putin och average Joe och Joanna. Thing is – its difficult. Thats what adulthood learns. Young people like to think ”revolution” or ”handle like a crisis”. When growing up learns you that difficult questions are difficult to fix. And there is no glamour in it.
I’m sorry, but adults have utterly abandoned children. They have been used and discarded to advance the ideological agendas of net zero, covid and transgenderism. Greta is just the most famous example: Our failure to protect and nurture children is one of the most despicable and egregious aspects of our crumbling society.
In USA 50% of Black babies are aborted, and of those making it 72% grow up in homes without a father.
Yea, it must suck to be Greta…..
How on earth have you managed to link the poor rates of family breakdown of an ethnic group in America with an autistic Swedish girl?
Everything is interconnected now.
Depends who does interconnection.
Yeah, I baulked at that one too. Some people seem to live by the code of the non sequitur. Whataboutery reigns supreme.
Hey if nofunberg wants to identify as black thats up to her, many a pot smoking Eton boy does that so i think she should be allowed to as well. On a related note i think she is one of the very few ppl who may actually benefit from some limited marijuana use.
He’s responding to a post which says ‘adults have abandoned children’
He’s making an ironic point. Clumsily, but appropriately.
Monomaniac, I suspect.
Wow that 50% stat is pretty scary and worse than even Soviet babies. I am not doubting it but are there refs/DOIs available?. I think “no-fun berg” as she’s know in my circle actually has significant mental health issues, possibly even a personality disorder – she seems so much like Joan of Arc. She was clearly being used by creeps like Moran and Bully Boy Berkov. Miliband is a Napalm Death fan, so shouldn’t really be that gullible (or creepy) – Perhaps he likes the music but never read the lyrics!
*Bully Boy Bercuckold.
*In USA 50% of black babies are aborted
I’ve never read a statistic that 50% of Black babies are aborted. Source for that?
*I’ve never read a statistic that 50% of black babies are aborted. Source for that?
Most abortions in first trimester. There are no “babies” aborted at that point.
I suggest you don’t try that line on women who have miscarried in the first trimester, Stephen. Their grief is very real, and for you to gaslight them by refusing to refer to their unborn children as babies is frankly despicable. Indeed, even women who voluntarily choose abortion for whatever personal reasons also have to grapple with complex feelings in the aftermath. Maybe stop trying to be a male feminist and start trying to be a nice man.
Let them eat cake…
Indeed. Thank you for your comment.
The same mentality applies to Australia’s authorities having no idea about the actual range, spread, and volume of crimes, including acts violating the Geneva Convention* even in a suburb of million $ homes where I have owned my home since 2001. Authorities’ wilful blindness** to crime & corruption is perhaps the longest non-Aboriginal tradition of Australia.
* https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/perfect-crimes-y-australia-katalin-kish
** Victoria Police Corruption. (736 pp.) Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8 scanned into pdf in full and shared with the author’s permission
in full – one large file, needs a fast Internet connection
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:ef8f1806-0cfc-417c-8def-68349ad37aa7
chapter by chapter with foreword from Katalin Kish
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JldNgl6U-OvI8yOEPAdKxwrPzzgPjxgZCLudLiAbrFE/
“The abortion rate in the United States varies by race and ethnicity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2020, there were 24.4 abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic Black women1. This is higher than the rate for Hispanic women (11.4 per 1,000), non-Hispanic White women (6.2 per 1,000), and women of other races or ethnicities (12.7 per 1,000) in the same age range).”
This is from Bing.
That would be roughly 2.5%, not 50% then.
No.. The 24.4 abortions are for 1000 women of child bearing age (15 to 44). The question is how many of those women are pregnant in an average years? 20? 30? 50? 100? If it’s 100 pregnancies, then 24.4/1000 becomes 24.4% of pregnancies aborted. If it;s 50 pregnancies, the 24.4/1000 becomes 48,8% aborted..
Thanks MM. And thus miles off the 50% twaddle the character at the top of this stream alleged and then that some others delighted in without any thought to check, making themselves look total berks too. Just shows the cesspit in which some subscribers are prepared to go.
Please note my reply to Marc Miller: The percentage of abortions per total number of pregnancies is at most 33% for Black women, and would be slightly lower if we added spontaneous miscarriages and stillbirths to the total number of pregnancies. This is still a very high rate of abortions.
The original claim was that 50% of Black babies are aborted. The CDC data you quote actually doesn’t measure what per cent of pregnancies are terminated by Black women in the U.S.. It compares the number of abortions per ethnic group without including the number of pregnancies per ethnic group.
I found information that Black women have 474 abortions, relative to every 1000 live births. This stat is 8 years old, and more importantly, it leaves the number of spontaneous miscarriages and still births out of the calculation.
https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/HHRG-115-JU10-Wstate-ParkerS-20171101-SD001.pdf
Taking it as it is, the total number of pregnancies is 1474, with 474 being aborted, indicating 33% of pregnancies are aborted by Black women. If we knew the number of miscarriages and stillbirths, we could add it to the total number of pregnancies. This would lower the percentage of abortions relative to the total number of pregnancies.
You have failed statistics. See comments below.
Such cynical nonsense. Children enjoy the highest standards of living in human history and have freedoms, health and wealth far in excess of previous generations.
Where was that freedom during Covid? Freedom not to attend school? And net zero will destroy whatever wealth we have left. Sounds wonderful/
Covid restrictions weren’t exclusive to children. What is exclusive however is their future and their own children’s, which will be very bleak without addressing climate change.
But they were completely unnecessary for children who were clearly at extremely low risk from the virus from the start. I’ve seen the impact it’s had on my friends children and it has been psychologically devastating. We sacrificed the good of our children on the alter of the old and fat. We demonstrated to them extreme cowardice and selfishness that I expect – and almost hope – will come back to haunt us when we need their care in our own dotage.
Of course it was necessary, they are filthy little vectors.
Only the most rabid of Covidties still pretend that it was necessary to apply Covid restrictions to children.
And yes their future will be very bleak if we persist with this net zero nonsense
Necessary how? Children were at virtually no threat at all from Covid. None. And that was clear from the beginning when the at-risk groups were identified. In the aftermath of what you call “necessary” is a rash of excess deaths, new health issues within populations not noted for these conditions, plus the lost learning time that isn’t coming back.
I give you a thumbs-up for sarcasm.
As an old person (64), but not fat, I resent your comment that my life is worthless.
I will be 60 next week, am not fat, and don’t resent his comment.
I did not say, or imply, your life was worthless. But the fact you jump to that conclusion rather than address the actual point I was making makes me reconsider my position. And your resentment makes me smile.
You are not old
What desperately needs to be addressed is the unhinged fear of “climate change”. No one who has any understanding of climate buys the “climate crisis” notion, but the believers just put misplaced faith in alarmist propaganda. That belief is apparent in Stock’s essay and taints an otherwise valuable perspective.
I’m with you there!
35 years of failed predictions and some people still can’t give up the hysterical nonsense. Meanwhile, I’m considered a denier even though I believe CO2 is warming the world and poses a problem for the future. It’s simply not an existential crisis.
I agree. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and the Cold War. I abandoned my law studies and went travelling, expecting on the best informed predictions that I was wisely using the last years of my and everyone else’s lives. That was an existential crisis. Climate change is going to put a huge number of people through a lot of hardship, but the species is not even vaguely threatened, Mankind will endure the pain and adapt. I sure wish it wouldn’t happen and do what I can to avoid it, but the end of the world it’s not.
That was arguably true 15 years back, esp. here in UK after we’d benefited from a decade of competent goverment under Tony Blair.
It’s not remotely true now. Take hunger among UK children for example. Even by 2017, over 3 million UK children were found to be at risk of hunger during school holidays. By 2020 UNICEF started funding UK food relief charities for the first time in hisotry. According to a study release by The Food Foundation a couple of weeks back, nearly a quarter of UK households with children experienced food insecurity druing 2023.
This isn’t to mention things like the rise of MOPs, often with severe black mold or insect infections that afflict health conditions on children. Or the fact studies now consistently find young people have historically unparralelled levels of poor MH.
What’s with the acronyms? They only serve to make your comment difficult to understand. I’m guessing MH is mental health, but have no idea what a MOP is.
Actually, MH is an initialism, not an acronym. Most people don’t know the difference between the two.
Members of Parliament?
Not from where i am standing – selfish parents and chronic partying are the only things i’ve seen create food poverty in the modern era. – 20kg of rice is still only £14 at the asian stores and the local very posh farm shop does 5kg of any 9 veg for £4. So just add water and flavour and thats 4 fed for £18 pw – albeit on a Buddhist diet. We live in a posh toen 30m from central London so i guess its cheaper in the provinces. I have a some HMOs and agree some are slums but its too risky as a business to cut corners on gas, elec and structure/fabric. You can’t collect rent if you’re in jail or involved in blook feud with some outfit from the Greater Ottoman area. Any business that immolates or poisons their tenants (who are their clients) is rotten from the off. When i was young (living up north in the provinces) we used to take veg and occasionally meat from farmers fields to supplement income – it meant we could afford tobacco and some alcohol and a small amount of drugs if we were flush
Because they are surrounded by wokies
So why are the streets where I live full of cars but silent and empty of children. Just passers by walking to and from,as I do. Yet old film from the 1920s even up to the 1960s shows streets swarming with kids,all playing in that nightmarish fashion kids do. And I even at my advanced age can recall how much of that “innocent play” was also subtle gauging of the other kids talents and abilities,jockeying for social positions,working out who was top,and who was the one to kick around. Who was stupid and able to be tricked,who was the clever b*****d. Are children really free when even 12 year olds are usually accompanied by a parent these days and a child out alone is vulnerable to a sexual predator,men who get their excitement out of transgression. Is it a coincidence about the first syllable of that word.
The problem is we’re willingly duped, mostly by social media and media in general to think a sexual predator lurks around every corner. They don’t according to Jonathan Haidt in his rigorous studies. But we’re too far gone to believe it now.
The fact that I survived my childhood is incredible luck, if you list the games we played, the construction sites we ran through, the bombs we blew up. However, it was a completely ordinary childhood, only a few lost partial vision or some fingers
Da kidz is in da bedrooms on da fonez an da gamez. Another 5 years, when VR and AI take over, goggle box will have an entirely new meaning.
God help us all…
If the streets are full of cars, the children would be wise to stay off them.
Exactly. That’s what they are told to do and that’s what is wise to do. Lots more cars. Faster, too.
They’re indoors playing war games on their computers/phones. Come AI and its plethora of ‘add ons’ and headsets they’ll never leave their rooms again…
Because they are at their screens
“health and wealth” yes, Freedom definitely NO!
Depends on your interpretation of freedom – do they do what they want? Undoubtedly, even if though that may clash with utopian ideals of playing outdoors.
More Enid Blyton are LESS ‘health and safety’ might be a good start.
Totally.
Let kids be kids, let them play in the mud, climb trees and play kid games.
Why would they want to do that when they can destroy entire planets on their computer screens?….he said cynically
They don’t want to do that – they want to stare at their electronic devices.
Why the downvotes?
The audience prefers an echo chamber.
I wouldn’t call a utopian ideal, but back in the sixties and seventies we sure had fun. Lots of adventures and fresh air. We learned to negotiate, set rules and give bullies the cold shoulder ( sometimes things got a little out of hand). I don’t remember one kid who was overweight. I feel sorry for kids today. The only adventures they have are video games and those aren’t real.
That was indeed the point I was making.
I wouldn’t be so sure about the “health”. Obesity in children, mental health issues… “wealth”, yes, it seems even children who are considered poor these days have more in terms in of access to electronic goods and so forth than most kids did even a decade ago.
Agreed, I really used H&S as a euphemism for far too much MOLLYCODDLING, and general risk avoidance.
As to child obesity, what an absolute nightmare it is to see these lumpen dwarfs on every corner.
Yes, I agree. Risk avoidance in turn leads to less play, less time outside and unhappier kids.
And even health is stalling.
https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Are-young-children-healthier-than-two-decades-ago-Nuffield-Foundation.pdf
There’s a lot going on and a lot to unpack. The UK (at least) is very divided. Those at the ‘bottom’ are not in a good place. The level of malnutrition, multi-generational educational failure and social inadequacy is astonishing. It can be debated all day long the extent to which it is bad parenting or societal failure at large, but what is happening is that large swathes of UK cities are feeding children by free to use breakfast clubs (often funded by a combination of council and private donation by food companies such as cereal manufacturers). There is the issue of the ‘Covid kids’ where some of those that were toddlers during the lockdowns are badly damaged by the lack of interaction and have badly underdeveloped social skills. Some can barely interact with other children and have to have 1:1 teaching because they attack other children. My wife is involved in this and it is staggering the extent to which these problems exist.
When patents earning in excess of £4000 a month find it hard to feed their kids. At the other end of the scale, there are parents who are doing without every day to make sure their kids are fed, watered and warm. So what is wrong with the country? Too long people have been told they can have it all without personal responsibility. Well, gues what, they cant. It is not up to me to pay my taxes so every working parent gets free nursery places for their children and free food at school. We need to get back to means testing so only those in genuine need benefit from the taxes of others. .
I have to say that your comment aligns rather curiously with your username.
Freedoms or lack of parental care?
Please stop replying to Robbie K. He is simply a troll who says provocative nonsense to inspire downvotes. It’s really tedious, actually Robbie.
You’ve misinterpreted my post completely.
Thus providing further proof, if any were needed, that “standard of living”, veiwed as an economist would, is not a good measure of well-being or thriving.
yeah but you can’t have conversations with 90+ % of them – when i was young the number able to communicate with adults was 50% plus in a town full of heavy industry where only c20% went to university or polytechnics.
Virtually nobody under the age of 25 reponds to a ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Hi’ when I’m out walking the dog.
They can’t hear you I fear Peter they all have earbuds plugged into their ears banging out later in life hearing issues..in twenty years time even sans the earbuds they still won’t hear you greet them..
Children are ruled by their electronic devises. That’s not freedom, though they think it is.
We’ve abandoned them, and many people don’t seem to like or want them, given our falling birth rates.
I think we “protect and nurture” children to the point of insanity, as far more eloquently identified by Kathleen Stock in this article.
I was horrified when my 12 year old grandson said he’s looking forward to having a mobile phone when he starts secondary school and doesn’t mind at all that his parents will be able to track wherever he is!
My grandchildren also get mobile phones when they go to secondary school. However, the parental controls enable their parents to limit the amount of screen time available. (I think it has been set at 2 hours daily.)
My point was that he’s not bothered about his parents knowing his whereabouts at all times. He’s only 11 but I imagine that will change when he’s older…. I hope so!
On a trip to the California a couple of decades or so ago I was appalled by the infantile and breathless delivery used by News readers but all too soon the same absurd intonation and dumbing down was being applied in the U.K. – look at how adults are often portrayed in television commercials these days too. We saw where this led during the pandemic when the general population were literally grounded like children as they simply could not be trusted to behave and obey.
We are in the dense woods of the Age of Stupid and I’m not seeing much light being shed on the way out of it yet.
Agreed. I read that 1 in 5 UK children have nightmares about climate change due to school indoctrination.
Totally agree, unfortunately children are being manipulated, and great is autistic which has been used to manipulate her further. The WEF are the main driver in this, and it goes to show you how the corporate world are happy to manipulate very young children for greed and control. Our capitalist system has become corrupted by the powerful. And it’s sick, we must protect our children, and advise them for the future, as we need change, and the future is dependent on them having the skills and gumption to stand up for what’s right.
I also took issue with that point, but not because of the relatively recent things you listed. Society encourages people to be more self-centred now, and has done for several decades, and if you’re more self-centred you are by definition less concerned with the welfare of others, including children.
Thats maybe true for parents not born in communities where daytime work for wages are the answer to the question ”what to do with life”. Job job working parents, I claim, have not abandoned their children. To grow up to become a responsible, caring, critical and well-functioning Citizen is – i think and hope – still the way working for wages people address their children.
I wrote my comment before I saw you’d said it much poor pithily. Anyway – ‘what Jim said’
In a recent op-ed, Greta informed us that “there is no climate justice without human rights” (meaning Israel can’t take preventative action against terror). I would say almost the opposite. If we are concerned about climate, we need to think again about the scope of “human rights”. In particular, mass migration is a flow of people from countries with a low per capita carbon footprint to countries with a high per capita carbon footprint. So the liberal elite need to recognise that the “right” to free movement is trashing the planet.
That’s the whole point of it,it was planned and implemented for that very purpose. After the Yids have exterminated the ones they stole the land off they’ll be coming for us.
Get a grip of yourself. And flagged for racism.
I flagged it too.
Most racists at least TRY to cover it up.
Poster is not clever enough.
When you use those kind of terms to describe people you give up any credibility
“there is no climate justice without human rights” (meaning Israel can’t take preventative action against terror)
Sorry but I don’t get the original statement or your interpretation of it-its just meaningless word salad using undefined terms-wtf is “climate justice” and by what tortuous process is it equated to “human rights”?
Hi Pedro. The reason those phrases are in quotes is because I am quoting St. Greta of Thunberg. Thse are her phrases. I totally concur with your points, i.e. there is no such thing as “climate justice” and even if there were, it would be a very totuos process that linked the notion to “huma rights”.
He’s quoting Thunberg.
Yes, he is! 🙂 “climate justice”. Of course, this is words salad, but they talk and think (!) this way today
Not even the ex-President of Harvard knows about quotation marks.
Whenever someone appends “justice” to a subject that has absolutely nothing to do with justice, a grift is afoot.
Greta has always struck me as a Joan of Arc-like figure.
I think of her as a fluffy mascot bound to the grille of an activist juggernaut a la Mad Max.
Perhaps the same fate awaits her?
Sort of but I think Joan of Arc had a bit more about her and more courage.
Agreed and hence her canonisation.
and look what happened to Joan of Arc, she met her fate, and the world moved on to other causes and wars over religion, food, and borders.
Greta is one of the world’s most popular and influential people and has the foundation to reinvent herself. She is a power for good and I have no doubt will remain so.
What has she achieved?
ZILCH!
Popular?
Sorry Robbie. Kathleen is right. Greta is probably past her sell by date. A few years ago the bigwigs at the UN were a bit embarrassed by an angry 16 year old telling them they stolen her future. As an angry 25 year old saying the same thing, she’d have been told to shut up & get a job.
She clearly has to move on from Skolstrejk för klimatet, but she is uniquely talented and will always hold a huge influence. People will always listen to what she has to say. Apart from the kind of crusty old goats in this audience of course ;o)
What exactly is her talent? She lives a life made possible by the very things she claims to hate. That seems more like delusion that talent, but perhaps I’m missing something. What is this unique skill that you see in her?
She has no talent.
People have stopped listening already. Soon the frustrated activists trying to circumvent democracy will find another unimpeachably innocent champion to push their beliefs.
And since when was bunking off school a noble sacrifice?
That is always assuming that she is not just saying what she is told to say. She has not actually achieved anything so I am unable to assess her talents.
She’s not even qualified to clean toilets which would be an environmentally friendly job.
You mean rather like Joan of Ark?
(apologies to Martin M! I didn’t immediately see your post!)
Come off it RK! That’s just a ‘wind up’.
Troll. You, I mean, not Greta. Well also Greta, but in a different way.
You may be right. Today’s climate justice warriors are tomorrow’s eco-fascists.
Satire?
Her celebrity may have generated a career – but would you want to make a living preaching Armageddon to small rooms of the already fervent believers?
The Quaking Brethren of Cold Comfort Farm indulging in the orgiastic pleasure of being told how wicked they are.
I am absolutely sure she means to be a power for good, but her later avtivist turn is not really helping her initial initiatives
The oddball modern Left may have projected their fears onto this latter-day Joan of Arc, but they also laid their fantasies at her feet which as a phenomenon has a queasier feel to it.
I think it might be that they lack rock star heroes now, while the icons of the silver screen are now British kids at an English public school for wizards. Then there’s Hunger Games, Twilight and Taylor Swift playing the eternal adolescent.
All in all, there is far too much concern for children’s sexual identity in the Foucauldian nightmare of today’s culture.
Thanks, KS. Just nailed it; and liked the Bercow bit.
Agree – great article. Thanks KS.
On this question I have two thoughts.
The first is that social media rewards extremes and young people very often think and feel in extremes, so they’re a perfect fit. What we used to call “acting out” has become a highly marketable commodity. People who have a “brand” to sell (politicians, celebrities etc) are drawn to the eyeballs, the public validation of their virtue etc.
The second is that this is the natural consequence of elevating feelings, “lived experience” etc above facts. The young are very good at being angry, passionate, upset etc and in this new world those emotions must be accepted uncritically.
The obssession with youth that began back in the 50’s and 60’s. Previous to that kids looked forward to adulthood and went out of their way to look and act the part; Lauren Bacall was 19 when she made “To Have and Have Not”, ’44.
In our time the exact opposite is true.
I suspect it was because teenagers started to have financial clout for the first time, so worth pandering to by marketing & sales.
Also I think the absolute failure of ‘the old & wise ones’ to keep us out of world wars made people generally turn away from age & experience. Many other factors at play of course, as there always have been.
So true. Dumbing down has happened on an epic scale, but also an immaturity as never seen before. And those ‘adults’ who don’t work in the so-called real world (instead working in sheltered bureaucracies, agencies and academia) never want or get the chance to grow up.
If they really do. I would say its far, far from common. Most parents are still parents. But that does not mean that teenagers might catch up things online thats interesting. Having both leftwingers and roghtwingers as offspring I do stay informed. And we do nave dood discussions. Where they respect the somtimes boringly realistic views of their parents.
A better title would read ‘We need to ignore Greta’ her climate hysteria will bring her generation (and every other) nothing but misery.
That would be a big mistake to title it like that. What it really entails is that problems to be handled in adult manner – no glamour of revolution. But in the boring ways of politics, in the mishmash ov people living different lives with different stories.
I do not like Gretas ”activism” but I ”like” her weekly friday instagram post. Try to live more climate friendly and do mind environmental factors at elections and the like. And thats the way things have to happen – and are happening – no romance but acceptable changes to normal people’s lives. Revolutions are, frankly, for rich brats wanting excitement in life.
I very much agree with the premise that Greta Thunberg is a naïve child who has no real understanding of the complexities involved in the issues she campaigns around. What’s more interesting is her meteoric rise to sainthood.
Climate activism is to the 2020s elites what paranormal superstitions were to the Victorian ruling class – a fun distraction that wards off some of the anomie of their otherwise pointless, college-educated, soy-latte drinking, Laptop Class, urban lives.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with actual problems faced in the world today. If the climate activists ever got their way (which will thankfully never happen), billions would be plunged into poverty and hundreds of millions into starvation. The only saving grace in this dystopian horror scenario is that it is doubtful this human catastrophe would have any meaningful effect on average global surface temperature (AGST) – and so at least the cold and desperate would be able to count on slightly milder winters and longer growing seasons.
Of course, as Stock alludes to in her article, climate activism will never amount to anything more than some profitable greenwashing and a lot of virtue signalling. If indeed concentrations of CO2 are behind recently observed increases in AGST (and there’s ample reason to be sceptical) the trend will continue, most humans will learn to adapt (move, plant different crops…) and most likely, the species will be better off for it in a hundred years. That’s because we are on a rock floating in unimaginably cold, empty space. Heat is the only thing that keeps us alive, and our planet would benefit from more of it.
“…climate activism will never amount to anything more than some profitable greenwashing and a lot of virtue signalling”. I wish I thought so. A bill has passed allowing government representatives to enter your private home by force to check the eco-status of your house and home owners not complying with the green agenda can be sentenced to prison. I believe a Labour government is likely to use these powers.
Yikes – that is terrifying. Perhaps I ought to have added to the list: “greenwashing, virtue signalling, and eco-authoritarianism”
And there was I, thinking that I must have been among the last of my contemporaries to realise the IPCC was an expensive con trick, mostly because I am usually last to cotton on! Glad to have you on board, and it really cannot be said enough times, even though most of us seem to have just got bored of .it in the face of overwhelming Groupthink.
As for the sainted Greta, I’d like to think she’ll now be allowed by her cynical parents to be as normal a young woman as possible, autistic or not. But I suspect the BBC (for one, of many) won’t let that happen and that we’re stuck with her, along with all the rest of the hypocrisy, and exploitative opportunism that “AGW” has dumped on the West.
Being far from left wing and in no love with activism, I would like to see an organisation (not odd scientists) present a big, scientifically accepted study where this rather optimistic stance is presented. There should be enormous economical interests for such large studies.
until I do, i see IPCC and a rather more pessimistic stance as Current best thinking. Not meaning that as an excuse for green romance but a problem to indeed face as Adults.
A few years ago, I would have written the same sort of comment. Sadly, I think academia is just too broken to come up with such a study. Scientists who point out obvious truths like “heat is life” simply won’t get their work published, because it runs counter to current dogma.
I have never been either moved or bothered by Greta. Being a cold boring technocratic person, I would rather read a paper on ocean currents than listen to a depressed Swedish teenager – but I accept others have different tastes. As Kathleen says, the interesting point is not Greta herself but the reaction of adults to her.
I wonder, however, not just about the reverence for children that Kathleen discusses but a wider and growing willingness to abdicate many of the prized freedoms and responsibilities of a traditional citizen in a western society in favour of a more passive and conformist role. Greta worship is only one symptom.The age of social media seems to be breeding well fed and comfortable wannabe slaves willing to take direction. Self respect no longer seems to require as much as it used to. In particular, fewer people feel the need to construct their own opinions.
The causes are unclear. Maybe the new conformists have realistically if fatalistically assessed our brave new world – if one lives in China this is indisputable – or perhaps we are merely witnessing the final disappearance of the Protestant conscience or, optimistically, it may just be a transitory effect of the Culture Wars and will be reversed just as the conformity of the 1950s was.
If the new conformism is not a purely temporary phenomenon then it seems that, at best, we are heading for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Actually, HG Wells’s Time Machine may be a more instructive dystopian scenario. If humanity turns into Eloi, who will be the Morlocks? All encompassing and increasingly undemocratic governments? AI overlords? or a few progressives at Harvard?
Sorry. I seem rather morose this morning.
The Morlocks’ role is reserved, at present, for the ‘populists’. Knuckle draggers of the World unite. your underground kingdom awaits you!
“Being a cold boring technocratic person”. Perhaps on certain mornings, but I believe you’re more complex and varied, as you once disclosed in distinguishing your online persona from your rougher, real-life self, Mister(s) Carnegie.
Aspects of both Brave new World and 1984 prevail in the present day West, but we’re not in a full fledged dystopia yet. Not when any known swath of the past serves for comparison. Or which specific year that did not occur in our respective lifetimes would we choose to travel back to? (I can think of a few, but I’m not confident that I’d actually like to live in them once there).
At least the always-naive techno utopia bubble has been punctured, or at least given would-be-resuscitating hot air by fewer people of late. Aspects of human life will remain solitary poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And there will be paths to improvement too. Old Hobbes acknowledged that himself, though even some of the arch-nostalgists here might recoil from the amount of power he wanted to center in the monarch.
Life will go on in the leaking, mixed bag that has our planet has always been, from what we know through records and rocks. Even the robot overlords or climate catastrophes won’t stop its stubborn march. Until humankind’s march, at last, ends–perhaps a few billion years from now on another planet we haven’t had a chance to start overexploiting yet. I’m feeling stubbornly optimistic this morning at 10am California time.
Brilliant – I’ve never seen a better article about Greta.
Yes, an excellent article but I didn’t think it was ‘about’ the Swedish saint but more about the adults who adulate her.
The psychologist Dorothy Rowe has written a very insightful series of books on various aspects of human life,grief,money etc and in each book she analyses how there is much more complexity to each of these aspects of life than we admit,even though we secretly know it. On children she says (and I think this book was written in the 1990s) we sentimentalise children then she chillingly says (from her own work,history,and many studies) whatever we sentimentalise we easily kill. I find this a bit hard to take in but I feel she is right. The same tabloid newspaper that shows us some cute toddlers will get days worth of headlines out of all the bloodthirsty details of some similar toddlers murder.
Incidentally how is it that one drowned Syrian four year old on a British beach raised an outcry among British Grannies (those big wondering innocent eyes) but I’ve not heard a single Sun subscribing Grannie sing out about hundreds of Palestinian babies and they’ve got big wondering innocent eyes. Back to Greta,not us but they sentimentalised Greta and told us that was how we felt about her and a lot of us strenuously pointed out we didn’t.
She is in a perilous position now. I think she is trying to stick with the activist schtick because she has realised it’s made her a lot of money but she may be aware that she is losing credibility.
My great -nephew was a fan of hers,he thought she had the right idea,but he still bought a car and works hard to accrue money and all that stuff. He didn’t like it when I pointed out that I live more like Gretas ideal than him or his cohort. They talk the talk,I walk the walk! A lot of Gretas middle aged fans were just too young to be involved in that 1960s protest scene but they wish they had been.
There might be another one I’ve not heard of, but the famous drowned child picture was taken in Turkey.
Well spotted Sir!
I don’t bother with MsM or legacy or whatever it’s called now,my point is still accurate.
I’ve done the pointing out bit about so called green credentials to a couple of people who were/are very keen to talk about green issues. Food miles, clothes, buying stuff, replacing cars, three oversees flights a year sort of thing. Not really that well received!
To be seen as Green you have to talk a lot but not actually do that much. Having said that some admirable people both talk + do but it’s easier if you have money. I know people who will go on and on about how green they are and it’s all my eye and Betty Martin,but no ones checking.
Once again, an insightful article by Kathleen. She shines a light on quite a number of issues in modern society by using Greta as an example.
The little chap was probably a bit overwhelmed to find someone the same height.
I ‘hear’ Starmer intends to send the “poisoned dwarf to the House of Lords”
Will he be any better than Cameron?.
I didn’t need another reason not to vote for Starmer, as I’m running out of places to keep them. But thanks anyway.
He was so good for Labour when Speaker I’m not surprised.
And I.Q.
Please, I beg you Kathleen, do not use the dismissive words “populism” or ”populist” in your arguments. They are just intellectually bankrupt and you are so not that.
I disagree. KS uses those words in the way they were intended.
I find it genuinely thrilling to read Kathleen’s articles. Thank you again University of Sussex.
Let’s not forget, she is now on the street chanting anti Jew slogans; even published a picture with a typical antisemitic symbol on her shoulder.
It was nauseating to see the media, politicians and celebrities desperate to be associated with an autistic teenager. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have any idea about most of the science associated with climate change and it’s complexities. Carbon dioxide concentration is just one of a myriad of factors which affect global temperatures. We are coming out of an ice age anyway so the climate will be warming whether we reduce carbon dioxide levels or not. Everyone would do better to read Bjorn Lomborg’s book (Cool It) which has a wealth of suggestions about how we mitigate against the imminent warming which our planet faces; whether natural or man made. Everyone is so fixated on reducing carbon dioxide levels that they fail to see the negative consequence of this approach; not least the ruinous effects on our economy. There should always be a cost-benefit analysis done.
The problem is that politicians are not scientists and do not weigh up empirical evidence; they are merely chasing the ‘green’ vote. If anyone talks to me about ‘The Climate Catastrophe’, as it has now come to be known, I ask them, ‘What is the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today, and how does that compare with pre-industrial levels?’ If they do not know this basic fact, then all they are doing is repeating the mantras of others.
I would be interested to know what source you trust for CO2 levels as I find huge variations depending on what side of the fence the source is acting from. For instance NASA you would like to think is reliable, but it is definitely showing ‘highest levels now in recorded history’, which I personally do not concur with. I thought highest was during Cretaceous period, which was also a period of extreme lush vegetation. I will have a read of the book you suggest by Bjorn Lomborg.
The point is about ‘recorded’ history. We haven’t been recording data for very long; in the order of hundreds of years, so sometimes indirect methods are used to estimate variables from the distant past. I believe that carbon dioxide concentrations are measured from ice core samples and are pretty reliable. More modern techniques are more accurate. Certainly there have been huge fluctuations in carbon dioxide levels when looking at last 500 million years.
It offers practical solutions to the the issues we face without bankrupting the Western Economies. Fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy which we have; that’s why the Chinese are undercutting our manufacturing base. Instead of self-flagellation about our ‘carbon footprint’, the Western Economies need to formulate a long term energy plan which doesn’t leave us open to the mercy of countries like Russia and Iran. Energy security is vital to the future; whether that be an investment in nuclear energy (like the French did in the 70’s during the oil crisis), or fracking our own methane instead of importing it from the USA.
‘Just Stop Oil’, along with other dreamers, don’t appreciate that the petrochemical industry is so much more than burning fossil fuels. Try running the modern world without the plastics manufactured from hydrocarbons!
As a sapling, my palmiest days, ie the days when I was growing fastest relatively speaking, was when I had just sprouted from seed and luxuriated in the 10,000 ppm of life-giving CO2 in the soil atmosphere. As I poked my tender tendrils into the light I could still enjoy up to a 1000 ppm of the blessed gas just above ground level, especially when those bustling detritivores were busy doing their decomposing thing all around me. Now I’m more grown up and living largely overground, I have to make do most of the time with a measly 400-ish like the rest of you.
However there are a few brief minutes in the very early morning when the nighttime accumulation of respired CO2 still lingers down in the lower canopy where I live (which it does because it’s that bit denser than the other gasses). Then I still get a whiff of those old times. But not for long; the first rays of the rising sun are enough to energise an annoying and dissipating zephyr which mixes everything up, and it’s back to that 400 ppm.
So what I say is, everyone keep emitting for nature’s sake. As a tree, I don’t have the vote, but if I did I’d surely use it to support any party with more emissions in its manifesto.
Low levels of carbon dioxide are the rate limiting factor for photosynthesis. An increase in temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations will increase crop yields.
It would appear the world is 40% greener than it was 100 years ago.
400 ppm is so much better than the poxy 280 ppm before the industrial revolution!
Exactly!!
Bravo! JRR Tolkien would have loved you.
Her being autistic does not make her stupid. Her initial message – listen to the scientists I do find valid. And I did have the deepest respect for her way of starting the initiative.
From there and on, sure, her ”activist” development is nothing I applaud. I just think that she, as a maybe somewhat naive youth still had something to say initially. And if big, scientific initiatives of large organizations (not single scientists) gives a more positive view of the CO2 future I am all ears. There should be huge economic interests ready to sponsor such initiatives.
Great piece, but the Left’s weaponization of supposedly pure-of-adult-corruption kids is hardly new. Some will remember the nuclear freeze movement’s adoration of little Samantha Smith after she began a well-publicized correspondence-for-peace with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in the early 80s.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/greta-thunberg-and-samantha-smith-propaganda-poster-girls/
Thunberg is an ill-educated half-crazed marionette whose parents are very much on the extreme Left. She repeats their views verbatim and when she is asked simple enough questions she flounders as she’s required to think for herself.
It is indeed amazing that politicians of every stripe, to their ever-lasting embarrassment, seem to have been entranced by her, though as she recently was recorded spitting venom at Jews, her credibility might, by now, have taken something of a dive. And about time too.
Greta belongs in a mental hospital where she can receive the treatment she needs. Her parents belong in jail.
The considered opinion of someone who knows the family well, no doubt!
She would have been hugging bean bags at school. How the hell was she thrust onto a world stage! She has been exploited by the green lobby who didn’t give a toss about her personal issues. Very sad that a troubled teenager has now got to find her way in the REAL world. She doesn’t look very well equipped to do that, in my humble opinion. Where were her parents when she needed them?!!!
She sure has gone activist, but she didn’t start out that way. Its not helpful picturing her out like that, if you want to fignt leftie activism. She’s not stupid, her initial action was valid, if maybe wrong. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If scientists find out that CO2 levels are not going to be what they are supposed to be and the consequences not as supposed, no way there will be a “science conspiracy” to shut that down.
sure, the red-green romantic community has kidnapped this agenda, but in the end things are what they are, and if measurements have to be taken they should. But not by a hippie revolution.
Thunberg will go the way of Bush era activist Cindy Sheehan. The death of Sheehan’s son, an army specialist killed in Iraq, provided the perfect victim voice for the left, who made sure she was everywhere, and she ate it up. Of course, they forgot all about her shortly after her usefulness expired.
People aren’t “consumed with rage” and hate over Thunberg. Most have a Don Draper reaction to this kid: we don’t think about her at all.
I kind of liked Don Draper, and you are right, we do not think of Greta.
The hundreds of comments here wildly attacking her would strongly suggest otherwise, sport!
It is just the 5th of January, but this is going to be one of the best reads of 2024.
For me, Greta’s ideology is summed up by German You-tuber Naomi Seibt, who said “I don’t want you to panic, I want you to think!”
Not the Greta I know.
It is very hard for humans to be grown-up when they can be excited instead; but Kathleen Stock reliably shows us the way.
Greta can always join the WEF or some other radical group to further her activist agenda. She is being coached by her parents and other to be their “mouthpiece” to force their agenda on the rest of the world. Climate Change or whatever you wish to call it will go on, if its not this, it would be asteroids or EPM to rally everyone to change their being and lifestyle. There is enough problems in the world to worry about besides “The weather or what the world has been doing on its own for centuries.” Next agenda item will be Aliens & UFOs or Communism (via Socialism).
“Perhaps some are envious of her influence; others see political opportunity in bashing a soft and easily mockable target.”
Really, the fact that she was chosen as the pinup for the climate change religion was because she was not easy to mock or challenge.
she is usually just repeating activist talking points inherited from other people.
Well, yes. One might reasonably ask what has this girl actually done? In reality, she is little more than a mascot for authoritarians who always come for the children. Always. Cloaking this new Red Guard in green does not change the group’s underlying nature. Greta has the luxury of living in the first world and fretting over first-world problems, but lacks the self-awareness to realize it.
How right you are.
One of the many awful examples of the adult abuse which I witnessed was a supposed leader of an energy lobbying group saying “We hear you Greta”. It was so disingenuous, damaging and cowardly in so many ways.
At age 21 it is time for little Greta to turn in the halo and step down from the sainthood platform. Maybe even find a boyfriend. Also for thoughtful essays to stop being written about this shrimp.
“The point is that this is a young person of a totally predictable type: intelligent but also dogmatic, emotionally immature, somewhat socially challenged, and as yet unaware of the world’s ethical complexity.”
She seems distinctly unintelligent to me.
How dare you!
When I was Greta’s age, “pollution” and buzz about “the greenhouse effect” were the extent of the climate agenda though mainly relative to local air quality. Industrial interests and gas-dependent vehicles were to blame. But normal fluctuations in solar activity and solar flares were considered to make a significant contribution to fluctuations in global climate and temperatures. As far as I know, that role of the sun on our climate has never been disproven. I welcome solar physicists around here to enlighten me.
Today, any abnormal change in local weather serves to feed the cognitive arguments that drive a political climate wedge between “left” and “right”.
What if Greta (and her acolytes) came to believe that our global climate change issues are caused entirely by fluctuations in solar activity? And what if that were actually rhe case? Where would that leave us all on our “left” and “right” platforms?
In other words, what if someone could prove that we have no control over the fate of global climate change? What would Greta then choose to do with her activist energy?
The Sahara Desert was savanna grassland between 5 and 15 thousand years ago. The precession of the Earth’s orbit is a massive influence on climate and is cyclical. Other factors are also in play; such as continental drift (long term change), solar activity (relatively short term change).
“And we should also reserve some derision for those bitter Right-wingers so consumed with rage at the former group, that they can’t help but hate her for it too.” Seems like you threw that in here to balance out your argument. Sometimes the left is wrong and the right has nothing to do with it.
“the ever-growing popularity of Halloween, gaming, and the stockpiling of Star Wars toys.” No observer of modern culture makes me think more, and laugh more than you Kathleen. Thank you.
Gaming is an interesting one because video games are just like cards or board games in a modern format that adults have enjoyed since the dawn of civilisation.
I think the assumption that we ever “needed” her is highly dubious.
This is a great essay from Kathleen, as usual. It’s the sort of essay she wishes her students submitted for their coursework (when she was at Sussex) but so seldom did. But it’s oddly, frustratingly incomplete.
The motives for Greta’s adult supporters are described in no detail at all: “but rather upon getting themselves off the hook… or basically self-interested psychological reasons.” This needs to be fleshed out a little. Let me try.
One possible motive is performative: people who think that sounding virtuous is a perfectly viable alternative to behaving virtuously. It’s the equivalent of going to church each Sunday, but behaving as though the Ten Commandments did not exist during the other six days of the week.
A second motive encompasses the neomarxists. They think that climate change provides a welcome substitute for attacking capitalism, now that the economic reasons have been comprehensively discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another motive is fashion. Greta is terribly fashionable in a way that Mother Theresa and Lech Walesa used to be – the political equivalent of Taylor Swift.
A fourth motive is sympathy for her ‘disability’ (as someone who is autistic himself, I bridle at seeing it described thus). We are supposed to cheer her on, that she has not let disability stand in her way. It makes her a latter-day Helen Keller. Oddly, this does not include David Blunkett, who was never an icon for the blind: he was an effective politician, who happened to be blind.
Fifthly, Greta’s youth is her appeal, a sort of political Shirley Temple or Bonnie Langford. In the same way, Others, consciously or unconsciously, use irrelevant characteristics to propel their careers, such as Susan Boyle who found fame as the autistic singer. Greta will have to get accustomed to saying, “I used to be Greta Thunberg” for the rest of her life – a heavy price to pay for her five minutes of fame.
Good to see David Blunkett mentioned. A lot in there and very perceptive. David Blunkett actually achieved things instead of banging on about his disability.
The rot set in decades ago with the arrival of child-centred learning.
The problem is that the infantilism being adopted by adults is very different to the adolescent “oh so seriousness” of Greta. It’s not obvious how the two are connected. Adults aren’t behaving like the intelligent overly serious kid at school – the Greta – they are behaving more like the ones who possess no seriousness or maturity at all. They are childish in a much more straightforward way.
Greta is like an immature version of a mature person. Many of her elders are like mature versions of an immature person.
During my admittedly long lifetime Sweden has popped up on my radar six times:-
1: Gross collaboration with Adolf & Co during WWII.
2: Producing the splendid Aga cooker.
3: The equally splendid Volvo and Saab cars.
4: Björn Borg.
5: Shooting their Prime Minister in 1986.
6: And now Greta, the loon.
Thank God they’ve joined NATO, that should really scare the Ruskies!
Racist Grandpa chooses to display his ignorance to the world again!
Would you care to expand on that Ms Gobshite?
It seems to be quite accurate, unlike your response.
Another perceptive and well thought out comment. I’ve learned so much from you!!!
There are some people who might add ABBA to that list.
Who?
A number of my Baby Boomer female friends, for starters.
Are you saying you’ve never tried to put together IKEA furniture? Or eaten a meatball? Or watched the Muppet Show?
I love this part because I see this in my spouse and in many friends with children the same age as our own. “…..why is there an apparently increasing tendency for adults to identify uncritically with the concerns of children and teens?” I think the answer is social media, which today is having an enormous impact on culture. Unfortunately these cultural norms are being creating by “influencers” and are reflected in our children’s attitudes and beliefs. Too many parents want to be “friends” and gain “likes” for social credit with their children on social media apps.
I viewed Thunberg as stern, one who would scold me because I drive a car. Thanks to your excellent article, I feel more empathy for her.
I always wonder what these people are really like, when not protesting. Are they constantly angry? I think what made Greta was the UN ‘How Dare You’.
That was the bit that resonated with me as well. She kept going on about her “dreams”, while disparaging my Baby Boomer dreams (namely to drive a powerful car, and to jet off on lots of overseas holidays).
In the immortal words of Selma (or maybe it was Patty): “the older they get, the cuter they ain’t”
I’m sure Greta isn’t too worried about a load of grumpy gammons criticizing her on an obscure chatboard.
Your galactically dumb comments about young people are probably part of the reason that your grandchildren hate you though.
Thats a helpful as people saying she’s a stupid leftie autist. Think many, like me, thinks she started out reasonably, and with a message worth listening to. “Listen to the scientists”. But from there on, well she has not done things that are really helpful for her initial take.
A very insightful and critical analysis about the issues involved. Thank you. I am so much wiser now.
Paul Fussell had a marvelous way to describe the underlying problem here: “the cult of the unripe.” It isn’t just Thunberg (or David Hogg) standing in as Charlie McCarthy for adult ventriloquists, it’s also as longstanding as post-war Youth Culture: “Teach your parents well . . . and feed them on your dreams.”
No wonder she has reportedly struggled to understand why no meaningful changes have really happened in climate policy despite the huge hype around her protests.
She never really understood that even if people “listen to the scientists” in the way she wished, what do actually do remained the problem. There are always trade offs, in many cases no clear solutions, and significant parts of the problem are mainly economic, or collective action problems, for which scientists have no real answers.
The problems remain because people are really saying ‘Listen to those scientists that agree with me.
Agree with some of this, although of course the Author taking a pay-check here with an Article about the person and not the issue.
As regards why some were prompted to ponder things because of Greta’s youth, it’s not all the pseudo-scientific projection theory Author conveys. For some it’s because for the first time we are more aware we may hand to our successors a much poorer inheritance than we were bequeathed and hearing that from a child resonated uncomfortably. That does give food for thought – what is the inter-generational responsibility and how should it manifest itself?
I too have found some of Greta’s moments cringing but I fear that whilst my Grandfather’s generation that fought a World War and sustained a peace are properly remembered my Boomer generation will not be and will as time proceeds be weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The Doom Goblin!
Excellent, Kathleen.
Terrific article. But this:
‘many enthusiastic supporters were never really focused on climate action at all, but rather upon getting themselves off the hook.’
Which hook is that?
I bear her no ill will. But the journalists who made her famous? Scum. If there were a moral flush handle, I would never have heard of her, or catastrophic global whatever they say it is now.
What a joy to read Katherine Stock using the word ‘fulsome’ correctly and not, as is so often the case, to mean ‘exceedingly full’.
Stock shows here just why her talent is such a touchstone…
Absolutely on fire!
You, fellow readers and parents , can you identify with this adaptation with the opinions of your children and children in your neighborhood? Living in a area not void of progressive academichs in humanities I still think that parents are parents and perfectly capable of forming their own stances on controversial questions
Autistic Swedish school truant with zero science education and not much general education is treated as a goddess by deranged lefties. Why are we surprised?
I don’t think those on the right ‘hate’ her. Michael Knowles doesn’t hate her. He’s pointing to the phenomenon and puncturing it….the phenomenon, not Greta. It’s a variant of hate the sin but not the sinner. Her parents and the activists around her, used her for political ends. If she has become a focus for derision, that is their fault 100%. She has become a shorthand for the question ‘where are the adults in the room’. The DEI scandal in universities is much of the time driven by adults who are simply too scared of taking on the kids and wanting to appear ‘avec le’ as what’s his face used to say in Franglais. Where ARE the adults? They don’t run the universities. There are none in the BBC. The police and military have become uniformed kindergartens. Film and TV was always a holdout for maladjusted teens….. Certainly in most schools…and increasingly, the kids seem also to be running and ruining corporations. And Harvard aside, I can’t see this will change without some cataclysmic wake up call….something that kids might acknowledge they can’t handle. A war perhaps. Happy days
Great article and one that puts a spotlight on a number of concerning issues impacting us all:
Climate change – If the global reach of Greta and what she is campaigning for, still has little / no effect, no matter what global policies are introduced, if the innocence of youth and naivety to raise such catastrophic consequences doesn’t work, I can’t see anything working!
Social media / ‘cancel culture’ – I’m an 80’s child and while the world seemed at odds due to news bias, social media has magnified our issues as a human, to a level that i’m not sure there is any coming back from. We no longer look at the beauty of Greta’s thinking, but instead look to attack her weaknesses and differences for political / financial gain.
I could go on but work calls….. either way….let Greta be Greta….Listen to her, embrace her uniqueness but ignore what you disagree with….dont punish her for her views and instead let her be the person she is clearly meant to be. Let her be a force for good, not the butt of haters jokes!