Greta

​“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”   --  This was the headline quote on the world’s mass media within minutes after Greta Thurnberg emotionally addressed the United Nations “action summit” on climate change, September 23, 2019.
 
It has been a remarkable couple of weeks for 16 year-old Greta.  After sailing across the Atlantic on a sailboat to avoid carbon emissions (and to make headlines), Greta spent her time going from one TV appearance to another, and then spoke at a US congressional hearing where she boldly presented Congress with copies of a UN scientific report on climate change which she suggested they read, as they should already have done, and then act.  On Saturday as many as 4 million people in 150 countries joined the “Global Climate Strike” billed as primarily a young people’s movement, at least to begin with.  Greta was the impetus for this worldwide “strike.”  Greta addressed the crowd of 250,000 in New York City telling them, “Our house is on fire … it’s time to act.”
 
Greta began her activism a year ago by skipping school on Fridays and sitting outside the Swedish Parliament with a sign “Strike for the Climate”.  She was joined by a few other students some Fridays, and then other students in other cities across Europe began to “strike for the climate”.  Greta began to get world attention when she was invited to speak at the UN COP24 Climate Summit in Poland in December last year (2018).  “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” Greta told leaders at the summit. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with. We have to make our voices heard.”  Her speech was remarkable in that she commanded climate change facts combined with strident assertions that it was time for the next generation to arise and act since the older generations were stubbornly refusing to do so.  Shortly after that 3 Norwegian Members of Parliament nominated Greta for a Nobel Prize, to be awarded in December.
 
A number of things can be said about Greta Thurnberg, and they have been said by countless commentators.  But I wish to highlight a few:
 

• Greta is now the recognized spokesperson for the youth movement for action about climate change.  She earned this position by her clear-headed and aggressive statements in public forums.  She has acknowledged that she now has a broad platform and with it comes responsibility to lead.
• Greta is open and knowledgeable about her diagnosis with Asperger syndrome, which she describes as a plus.  Asperger’s, says Wikipedia, is “a developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication (such as maintaining eye contact), along with repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.”  It is a “milder autism spectrum disorder.”  She tells of her earlier childhood difficulties as a result of Asperger’s but says, “All of that is gone now, since I have found a meaning in a world that sometimes seems meaningless to so many people.”
• She has been the target of a hate campaign, variously described as based on the way she looks and her age, her egotism, the difference she is making in stirring up public action on climate change, and the fact she is calling out the older generation on their failures and signaling that it is time for the next generation to push the older one aside.  She concludes, ““When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go. And then you know you’re winning! … given the right circumstances, being different is a superpower.”
• It is her message that counts, of course.  It is not her age, her intensity, or her penetrating articulation, but the conclusions about climate change that she manages to capture in amazing sound-bites such as, “I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future.  I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.”   “We need to get angry and understand what is at stake.  And then we need to transform that anger into action and to stand together and just never give up.  We are striking to disrupt the system … and I just hope that it will turn out well.”

 
“Greta!  Greta!  Greta!” the throng of youthful strikers chanted in New York last Friday.  A person has made it to the level above front page headlines when they are known around the world by their first name.