The autism means she is bothered by incongruities between what we know about climate change and what we are doing about it. More bothered than most of us. And she just says what she thinks without some of the social filters that neurotypical people might have.
She might look innocent and small, but I think she knows what she is doing. After all, she was relentless in changing the minds of her parents first. Convincing her mother to give up flying which effectively ended her career as an international opera singer. I think that early success probably made a big difference. She has tasted success and has a model for how to achieve it.
She's smart. At or near the top of her class despite taking Fridays off to protest outside Parliament. It would be ironic for the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee to award her the Peace Prize, while the Swedish Parliament continues to ignore her.
I've been to the local school strikes for action on climate change and found it very moving to hear the chant "Whose future? Our future!" The greenhouse effect was first quantified in 1896. We know, we have known for 123 years. Denial is just dishonest at this point.
Greta speaks truth to power partly because she doesn't have the social awareness that most of us have. She is an outsider already. She doesn't fear being ostracised. She doesn't feel the need to avoid causing embarrassment. She doesn't feel the need to stay in her assigned social role (little girl, who should be passive and silent). And we can be grateful for all this without making it more than it is. She's not perfect - I've heard her quote "facts" that don't stand up to scrutiny (though not often). But she is certainly a figure around which we can come together in support and shared concern for our continued survival.
At this time in history our politicians are mostly not leaders at all. They have sold out to big business. They subsidise the largest multinational companies whose profits always seem to disappear come tax time. At the same time governments refuse to invest in the local economy.
In the UK we are witnessing Parliament having a complete breakdown. We should long since have had an election, but have been stymied by a piece of legislation brought in to help protect the Tories from UKIP. And the central issues are those that are vital to our economy or society. The issues are who is in control of the Tory Party and how they can neutralise the internal threat from the far right. Not the threat to the nation, but the threat to the Tory grasp on power.
Yesterday I lost my shit when I stumbled on a Tory brag sheet. This presented the present situation in the UK in purely Panglossian terms. The best of all possible worlds. Tories literally can't see schools failing, NHS failing, roads full of potholes, police failing, Brexit failing, employment failing, welfare failing, economic policy failing, housing policy failing, 4 million children living in poverty, a rise in in-work poverty, or any number of lesser failings. They can't see any negative news whatever. They don't accept any criticism.
The Tory govt sincerely believes that it cannot do anything wrong, everything's coming up roses, they are the best people for the job, this is the best of all possible worlds. They are literally delusional and a danger to the public. They belong in mental institutions not in political institutions (and you know I don't say this lightly).
The news from the USA is, if anything, even more distressing. Trump is president. I think people are still in denial about this. Trump was elected as president of the USA.
So we certainly need inspirational, truth-telling, leaders. Greta is a kind of catalyst to spark a reaction. We'll know the leaders we can trust because their actions and words will be self-congruent but also congruent with the social and existential situation.
The leaders we need are able to see that things are going wrong. The can see that our country will miss the Paris Accord targets and we are comparatively well-off. The less well-off are going to seriously miss their targets. Warming is going to spiral out of control.
The leaders we need are able to see that filling the oceans with plastic and the air with poison has to stop. Not reduce, but stop. There is no longer a business case for poisoning the biosphere.
The leaders we need will face up to these twin existential crises and step up to do what needs to be done, whatever the cost, because the cost of inaction is inconceivably high for future generations.
The leaders we need will not continue the policy of allowing businesses to dictate policies, especially when those policies are disastrous for the environment or society. We appear to have learned nothing from the global financial crisis and that means history will repeat itself.
However we need more than political and national solutions. Transnational corporations must be brought to heal. Since the Paris Accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent a climate catastrophe banks have invested US$1.9 trillion (trillion!) in fossil fuel companies. As far as I'm concerned this is a crime against not only humanity, but against all living things. They're calling this kind of crime ecocide, though I quite like omnicide - their business plan allows for the death of all living things so that when the human race dies out, some of us are richer than others.
I'm not a communist or a Marxist. I'm not authoritarian when it comes to people. I am some kind of socialist in that I think we should help look after each other and this is a role for government. I think the only way to achieve the goals we have is through investment of surplus capital combined with regulation of business - regulated capitalism.
Free Market Capitalism, like liberalism, mostly benefits the rich who have become very much richer. It is true that poverty is down since multinationals can export jobs and capital to poor countries where they can pay workers 1% of what a Brit or an American might make. But it's at the expense of wrecking the environment in those countries. It's at the expense of workers in richer countries where in-work and child poverty are now on the rise. Regulated capitalism combined with redistribution of the wealth provides the best chances of raising the standards of living for all. And the best chance of addressed the twin existential threats of climate change and ecosystem collapse.
The rich don't help the poor because they want them to have better lives. They help them because they want to convert them into consumers of products. They want to sell them shit so first they have to have an income and no choice but to buy what they need to live.
People should be free to determine how they live, but given sustainable options as a priority. If you want to reject plastic packaging or buy green energy then that should be easy and cheap; in fact it should be easier and cheaper than not doing so. Buying and using a zero emission car should be much cheaper and easier than using dirty car. Public transport could be zero emission today, but govt refuse to invest in it.
The particular forms that our response to climate changes takes will depend on who is in power and on the contributions of entrepreneurs and scientists. I'm not invested in a particular way of getting out of the shit. When you are in shit, the priority is to get out of the shit and wash the shit off. How that happens is not important. But of course there is no point in getting out of the shit only to end up in some other kind of shit. The solution to being in the shit cannot involve more shit.
So I'm glad that Greta did what she did and gained the notoriety she has. I'm grateful to her for her courage and sacrifice. She might be just the catalyst we need. Being a diminutive girl makes her non-threatening so she can say what must be said and be heard more easily than some others.
We should remember that Greta's growth was stunted because the disconnect between what she was taught about climate change at school (the completely uncontroversial bowdlerised primary school version of climate change) was so at odds with how the adults around her behaved that she had a mental breakdown. The cognitive dissonance created by the routine denial of the existential crisis was too great for her to bear. I know the feeling.
On one hand this highlights the hypocrisy of govts, oil companies, banks and so on, as well as the general mood of denial that pervades the media and society in general. And on the other we need to be compassionate, because fully facing up to the truth is a devastating experience. It can drive you mad. Just as yesterday I had a moment of utter despair when I saw how much in denial the government are with regard to the UK.
I find the cognitive dissonance of the world hard to bear as well. I find it gets me down. I find myself overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. I can't listen to politicians talk on the radio because there is a constant incongruity that screams liar! to me. They are liars. On TV it's worse because the sense of wrongness is so much greater. I can't bear it.
Governments and corporations (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference) are prepared to hurt us all to preserve the status quo. They are prepared to heat the atmosphere, to pollute our air and water, to cut down all the rainforests, to fill the ocean with plastic. They are prepared to do all that and will only not do it if we force them not to.
So as far as possible I'm going to get involved in supporting and participating in non-violent civil disobedience. I think our leaders are either insane, immoral, incompetent, or some combination of all three. They've reneged on the obligations of leaders and forfeited their moral authority to tell us what to do. They can still hurt me in many different ways, and I'm quite vulnerable, so I won't be amongst those being deliberately arrested, for example. But I do support these people. I honestly believe that rebellion is the only rational response to the existential situation we find ourselves in.
I'm linking up with local groups, especially Extinction Rebellion or XR. I'm supporting the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement which is incredibly inspiring. And a few other local rebellious events as they arise. XR plan a lot more disruption and I'm hoping to be part of that.
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