Greta Thunberg, Climate Protests, and the Reaction

[JackRiddler]

Back in February, Greta Thunberg refuted many of the defamations aimed against her, and against the movement of which she is only a part. If you're posting some smug critique of the youth leading the climate protests, at least read their responses in their own words. [This comment was aimed at people who were doing that; I have yet to see the like on RI.]

Teen Vogue, my favorite socialist party journal, did a report on some of Greta's attackers. Most of the attacks I've seen in social media echo or filter down from coordinated smear campaigns led by right-wing politicians and funded by fuel industry investors and the likes of the Koch foundations.

I have observed a tendency among powerful men with a masters-of-the-universe mentality to react poorly when a young person who is smarter than them tells them their worldview is full of shit. This effect can of course be found up and down the class hierarchy, especially among men who may not be powerful, but who identify with the form of power the "masters of the universe" embody.

Greta Thunberg is not only smarter than these guys. She is also, in truth, more free and autonomous. Unlike them, she acts on her own will. She and the other young people in this movement do not do what is best for their portfolio, or what their PR consultants told them to do, or what they think will get the votes. They are not puppets to their own money. They are not the managers and owners of the system that brings planetary extermination. They don't feel they must defend the system or trivialize the extermination. They have not yet committed themselves to the collective insanity.

As the rumours, lies and constant leaving out of well established facts continue, please share this newly updated clarification about me and my school strike.

Please help me communicate this to the grown ups who lie about me and family so that I can focus on school instead:

Recently I’ve seen many rumors circulating about me and enormous amounts of hate. This is no surprise to me. I know that since most people are not aware of the full meaning of the climate crisis (which is understandable since it has never been treated as a crisis) a school strike for the climate would seem very strange to people in general.
So let me make some things clear about my school strike.

In may 2018 I was one of the winners in a writing competition about the environment held by Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish newspaper. I got my article published and some people contacted me, among others was Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland. He had some kind of group with people, especially youth, who wanted to do something about the climate crisis.

I had a few phone meetings with other activists. The purpose was to come up with ideas of new projects that would bring attention to the climate crisis. Bo had a few ideas of things we could do. Everything from marches to a loose idea of some kind of a school strike (that school children would do something on the schoolyards or in the classrooms). That idea was inspired by the Parkland Students, who had refused to go to school after the school shootings.

I liked the idea of a school strike. So I developed that idea and tried to get the other young people to join me, but no one was really interested. They thought that a Swedish version of the Zero Hour march was going to have a bigger impact. So I went on planning the school strike all by myself and after that I didn’t participate in any more meetings.

When I told my parents about my plans they weren’t very fond of it. They did not support the idea of school striking and they said that if I were to do this I would have to do it completely by myself and with no support from them.

On the 20 of august I sat down outside the Swedish Parliament. I handed out fliers with a long list of facts about the climate crisis and explanations on why I was striking. The first thing I did was to post on Twitter and Instagram what I was doing and it soon went viral. Then journalists and newspapers started to come. A Swedish entrepreneur and business man active in the climate movement, Ingmar Rentzhog, was among the first to arrive. He spoke with me and took pictures that he posted on Facebook. That was the first time I had ever met or spoken with him. I had not communicated or encountered with him ever before.

Many people love to spread rumors saying that I have people ”behind me” or that I’m being ”paid” or ”used” to do what I’m doing. But there is no one ”behind” me except for myself. My parents were as far from climate activists as possible before I made them aware of the situation.

I am not part of any organization. I sometimes support and cooperate with several NGOs that work with the climate and environment. But I am absolutely independent and I only represent myself. And I do what I do completely for free, I have not received any money or any promise of future payments in any form at all. And nor has anyone linked to me or my family done so.

And of course it will stay this way. I have not met one single climate activist who is fighting for the climate for money. That idea is completely absurd.
Furthermore I only travel with permission from my school and my parents pay for tickets and accommodations.

My family has written a book together about our family and how me and my sister Beata have influenced my parents way of thinking and seeing the world, especially when it comes to the climate. And about our diagnoses.

That book was due to be released in May. But since there was a major disagreement with the book company, we ended up changing to a new publisher and so the book was released in august instead.

Before the book was released my parents made it clear that their possible profits from the book ”Scener ur hjärtat” will be going to 8 different charities working with environment, children with diagnoses and animal rights.

And yes, I write my own speeches. But since I know that what I say is going to reach many, many people I often ask for input. I also have a few scientists that I frequently ask for help on how to express certain complicated matters. I want everything to be absolutely correct so that I don’t spread incorrect facts, or things that can be misunderstood.

Some people mock me for my diagnosis. But Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People also say that since I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position. But that’s exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been ”normal” and social I would have organized myself in an organisation, or started an organisation by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing I did this instead. I was so frustrated that nothing was being done about the climate crisis and I felt like I had to do something, anything. And sometimes NOT doing things - like just sitting down outside the parliament - speaks much louder than doing things. Just like a whisper sometimes is louder than shouting.

Also there is one complaint that I ”sound and write like an adult”. And to that I can only say; don’t you think that a 16-year old can speak for herself? There’s also some people who say that I oversimplify things. For example when I say that "the climate crisis is a black and white issue”, ”we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases” and ”I want you to panic”. But that I only say because it’s true. Yes, the climate crisis is the most complex issue that we have ever faced and it’s going to take everything from our part to ”stop it”. But the solution is black and white; we need to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Because either we limit the warming to 1,5 degrees C over pre industrial levels, or we don’t. Either we reach a tipping point where we start a chain reaction with events way beyond human control, or we don’t. Either we go on as a civilization, or we don’t. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

And when I say that I want you to panic I mean that we need to treat the crisis as a crisis. When your house is on fire you don’t sit down and talk about how nice you can rebuild it once you put out the fire. If your house is on fire you run outside and make sure that everyone is out while you call the fire department. That requires some level of panic.

There is one other argument that I can’t do anything about. And that is the fact that I’m ”just a child and we shouldn’t be listening to children.” But that is easily fixed - just start to listen to the rock solid science instead. Because if everyone listened to the scientists and the facts that I constantly refer to - then no one would have to listen to me or any of the other hundreds of thousands of school children on strike for the climate across the world. Then we could all go back to school.

I am just a messenger, and yet I get all this hate. I am not saying anything new, I am just saying what scientists have repeatedly said for decades. And I agree with you, I’m too young to do this. We children shouldn’t have to do this. But since almost no one is doing anything, and our very future is at risk, we feel like we have to continue.

And if you have any other concern or doubt about me, then you can listen to my TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/greta_thunber ... on_climate), in which I talk about how my interest for the climate and environment began.

And thank you everyone for your kind support! It brings me hope.
/Greta

Ps I was briefly a youth advisor for the board of the non profit foundation “We don’t have time”. It turns out they used my name as part of another branch of their organisation that is a start up business. They have admitted clearly that they did so without the knowledge of me or my family. I no longer have any connection to “We don’t have time”. Nor does anyone in my family. They have deeply apologised for what has happened and I have accepted their apology.

We are asked to believe that at the age of 16, while his brother was in prison, Ben Franklin ran the print shop, became editor in chief of the New England Courant and took on the Massachusetts establishment, mocking the powerful Cotton Mather in a series of editorials. Come on! Who really wrote those columns? Who was paying for this? #gretahaters

Here is the four-section political grid with a Greta attack for every square:

Greta-Bingo.jpg

[thrulookingglass]

They have not yet committed themselves to the collective insanity.

Collective indoctrination, hive mentality, pyramidic power structures, patriarchal rule, nation-states, privatized industry. When you moved in to a new neighborhood back in the old days the locals used to greet you with, "So what church do you go to?" (Hint: the correct answer is whatever one they go to)

The greys often take children because they are yet to be polluted by the 'collective insanity'.

Earning money is more important than:

stopping war
racial equality
sexual liberation
finding the true causes of 9/11
human rights
ecological harmony
expanding your consciousness
spiritual enlightenment
intelligence
the health and well being of all
rewarding labors

If you answered (all the above) you are correct!

Its almost as if 'they' want to keep us busy with frivolousness while harnessing the glorification of deeply sequestered rule through violence, fear and terror. That and mega-yachting. In '77, at the age of four, I told my mom people would carry a portable phone with them in the future because communications was important. Irrationalism is the religion of the 21st century. Greta has lost her childhood to grotesquely delinquent adults. Child prodigy William James Sidis became a deep seeded critic of monetary capitalist philosophies which led to his ostracizing. Genius is changing law to allow your company to pollute without repercussions.

The Appalachian region is home to one of the oldest and most biologically diverse mountain systems on the continent. Tragically, mountaintop removal mining has already destroyed more than 500 mountains encompassing more than 1 million acres of Central and Southern Appalachia.

After the coal companies blast apart the mountaintops, they dump the rubble into neighboring valleys, where lie the headwaters of streams and rivers, like the Kanawha, Clinch, and Big Sandy. The exposed rock leaches heavy metals and other toxins that pose enormous health threats to the region’s plants and animals — and people. - Appalachian Voices

Here's to the wisdom from the mouths of babes
Here's to the lions in the cage
Here's to the struggles of the silent war
Here's to the closing of the age.

When did you stop caring about humanities future?

Jack Ruby liked knowing powerful people. DJ Trump spinning the same records.

The war on pine nut farmers goes well.

We are holding the gun to our own collective head, expecting eventually someone else will be found responsible for pulling the trigger.

[BenDhyan]

I think most serious non-scientist followers of climate science read the abstracts or media coverage of climate science papers and the respective scientific critiques and reactions, since Greta has not to my knowledge had any climate science papers published, who would be interested in her opinions?

[DrEvil]

I think most serious non-scientist followers of climate science read the abstracts or media coverage of climate science papers and the respective scientific critiques and reactions, since Greta has not to my knowledge had any climate science papers published, who would be interested in her opinions?

Her opinion, one that she repeats often and loudly, is to listen to the scientists and act accordingly. Don't need a PhD for that, and you don't really need to be a published scientist in any field to have an opinion on it. Are you a published climate scientist?

[JackRiddler]

since Greta has not to my knowledge had any climate science papers published

Thunberg would agree, which is why she presented the IPCC report as her written testimony to a Congressional hearing, empasizing in her spoken statements that the politicians shouldn't be listening to her about that, but to the scientists. You're not actually following this stuff at all before you post your preformed and misinformed opinions, are you?

[Iamwhomiam]

Bendy, you there?

[conniption]

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/09 ... -ii-act-v/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Behavioural Change Project “To Change Everything” [Volume II, Act V]

September 18, 2019

By Cory Morningstar
...
The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent series has been written in two volumes.

[Volume I: ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI • Addenda I] [Book form]

[Volume II: An Object Lesson In Spectacle • ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V] [ACTS VI & VII forthcoming]

continues: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/09 ... -ii-act-v/

[BenDhyan]

I think most serious non-scientist followers of climate science read the abstracts or media coverage of climate science papers and the respective scientific critiques and reactions, since Greta has not to my knowledge had any climate science papers published, who would be interested in her opinions?

Her opinion, one that she repeats often and loudly, is to listen to the scientists and act accordingly. Don't need a PhD for that, and you don't really need to be a published scientist in any field to have an opinion on it. Are you a published climate scientist?

Sure, anyone can believe in apocalyptic climate change claims by non-scientists who believe in apocalyptic claims by some climate scientists, and spread the word, some people prefer though to observe reality in the here now, and stay in the peace, whatever will be will be...

[BenDhyan]

since Greta has not to my knowledge had any climate science papers published

Thunberg would agree, which is why she presented the IPCC report as her written testimony to a Congressional hearing, empasizing in her spoken statements that the politicians shouldn't be listening to her about that, but to the scientists. You're not actually following this stuff at all before you post your preformed and misinformed opinions, are you?

Sure I have been aware of the Greta propaganda, but she is just a kid who does not understand the science, so why would I listen to her?

[BenDhyan]

Bendy, you there?

[Wombaticus Rex]

"The Reaction" is the entire point of the Greta Thunberg project, though, no?

It's smart, cynical PR to use a child as your spokesmodel front, especially a "disabled" one, because then the Facebook MAGA brigade are not just casting aspersions on a teenage girl, but a teenage autistic girl.

So there's levels to this, and it's in the moneyed interests of everyone involved to mix up those levels and make coherent conversation impossible. Thunberg is, of course, a human being, and clearly a highly motivated one, too. She has been injected into an activist culture that's been looking for someone like her; I see a lot more stigmergy at work here than conspiracy, although stigmergy is just an open conspiracy at the end of any given day.

Climate activism, like any other activism, can be usefully interpreted through John Robb's 'Open Source Insurgency' model -- Thunberg messaging is powerful and effective, it is both 'wedge' and 'magnet,' a golden ticket. She helps build coalitions on your end and makes your opposition froth on cue, much like The AOC Show. Which I also appreciate on multiple simultaneous levels, despite disliking AOC where I very much like the angry little Swede.

It's no different from the music industry: big money is looking for the right product to invest in.

Also worth noting that the essential claims of "The Reaction" are largely true: Thunberg is being used by an adult PR apparatus to push a specific agenda. The most important question from there is whether or not you trust the good intentions of the NGO Industrial Complex and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Perhaps the purest form of philanthropy in these United States is how our ruling class always gives us something to argue about.

[JackRiddler]

[...]

[1] It's smart, cynical PR to use a child as your spokesmodel front, especially a "disabled" one, because then the Facebook MAGA brigade are not just casting aspersions on a teenage girl, but a teenage autistic girl.

[...]

[2] Also worth noting that the essential claims of "The Reaction" are largely true: [...] The most important question from there is whether or not you trust the good intentions of the NGO Industrial Complex and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

[3] Thunberg is being used by an adult PR apparatus to push a specific agenda.

[...]

1. Assumption smuggled in as if so self-evident it need not be stated.

2. Stated but not backed. Got evidence of this link other than "this would be what I'd expect them to do" or "this rhymes somehow with what she's saying"? So the question isn't whether I would trust the actors you name, not yet. It's still about your hypothesis that Greta can only be a production of Them and not of her own movement and agency and action at the right time and in the right way to get the attention.

(By the way, is the anthropogenic extermination event due to industrial civilization as presently constituted and not manageable by the supposed elites or their preferred means of action actually happening, or is it not? Because you don't strike me as one who'd think not, but I guess I should check. Since your thinking on this would make a lot more sense if you also thought planetary eco disaster due to capitalism was not already underway.)

3. How many minutes you figure the climate protests got in coverage on U.S. corporate media outlets, compared to other stories the same week? I'll bet you it didn't crack into the top three stories of the week.

And agenda? You mean like this?

"And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. 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 fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"

I'm down with this accurate statement. So I guess I'm a useful idiot?

It's an inherently anti-capitalist statement, and the movement of which she is only a part is inherently anti-capitalist, whatever the various illusions many within it have yet to overcome.

Are you sure she's reading from the script you think you hear the Rockefellers writing?

What these words will be used for is a different matter. No one gets to control how they are spun. But so far I see you not talking at all about the contents of anything she or the very large movement that preceded her and of which she is only a small part have said. Instead you are talking selectively about general contexts. Your contexts do include the bad NGOs and corporations who want to direct all green energy efforts toward privatized neoliberal financialized surveillance-state solutions and/or taxation of the air we breathe. We agree these exist. You seem to be equating this real tendency as identical to and defining the entire movement of which Greta is a small part.

So easy to imagine the awesome, barely-specified Them can get four million out into the streets and tens of thousands of them ready to fight at Standing Rock and chain themselves to pipelines. Aren't They afraid of blowback?

Here's what I don't see you discussing about the contexts: Who is actually in charge, as opposed to future dystopian potentials. In charge of this issue currently are the Trumps and Bolsonaros as faithful soldiers for the most aggressive anti-ecological elements of capital. And they're literally out to complete the genocide of the natives, whose own activists are among the leaders of the movement of which Greta is only a small part.

Will you go all the way? Will you ignore the vast legacy-energy lobby, a siamese twin to the MIC, which runs entirely on oil and exists to fights wars for control of oil and the profits derived from it? Sure, sure, the military take climate change seriously, how suspicious! Oooh! Do they have a plan to decarbonize their fucking jet fighters and aircraft carriers?!

Will you deny that this vast lobby and set of institutions in favor of more oil (until it actually runs out), more coal, more gas, more lies, and more wars for control of oil absolutely still dwarfs the still young movement against planetary extermination in spending, reach, influence, and possibly also popular support among U.S. citizens? Do you deny they have a much bigger PR apparatus than the one you impute to Greta's promotion? Do these actors figure into your calculus anymore at all? Any Kochtopuses and Exxons and Lockheeds actually running the government (and holding a big chunk of hegemony within the international institutions of course) in your world? Or have you now reached the point of imaginary Soroses all the way down?

.

[Wombaticus Rex]

3. How many minutes you figure the climate protests got in coverage on U.S. corporate media outlets, compared to other stories the same week? I'll bet you it didn't crack into the top three stories of the week.

Yes, and that says it all: she is getting more coverage than her ostensible cause.

As for the rest, I stated my shit pretty clearly and you're just determined to holler at someone else about something else.

[JackRiddler]

3. How many minutes you figure the climate protests got in coverage on U.S. corporate media outlets, compared to other stories the same week? I'll bet you it didn't crack into the top three stories of the week.

Yes, and that says it all: she is getting more coverage than her ostensible cause.

Not what I meant. I meant, the climate protests including Greta Thunberg. How much coverage did they get? That's what I bet was not top 3 stories of the week as measured in minutes/headlines in the U.S. corporate media. A bubble of the Greta-obsessed have convinced themselves that her "prominence" is fully orchestrated, thus begging the question of how prominent any of it actually is. It's a fast media cycle, how much coverage did the eco-movements get this week?

The energy bigs and lobbies you know well about but leave out from your analysis so far would still dwarf this imagined orchestration of the Greta phenomenon by your "big NGOs," even if it was real.

As for the rest, I stated my shit pretty clearly and you're just determined to holler at someone else about something else.

Sad to see you writing this, as one who can make a case. If you answered the questions I posed directly of your text, you might have to arrive at other conclusions. Or you might not. But it's clear they are questions about your text, and no one else's.

Also, please stop murdering cats in your back yard.

Oh, wait, of course you're not murdering cats. But it makes you sound like a loser, doesn't it? That is akin to how your use of the word "holler" works. I am not hollering at you. I am responding to your post. Taking it very seriously; it now appears more seriously than it merits. You have no obligation to reply. But you have replied, and your reply is what the techies on these matters call sophistry.

[Harvey]

Former Guardian journalist and frequent Guardian critic Jonathan Cook: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019 ... erg-doubt/

Greta Thunberg and the consolation of doubt

The more Greta Thunberg articulates the terrifying emotions of awakening to our imminent extinction as a species – as she did, filled with trembling rage, at this week’s UN “action summit” on the climate crisis – the more a section of the progressive left digs its heels in to resist her role as an agent of change.

“We will not let you get away with this.”

Greta Thunberg challenges the UN ‘action summit’ on climate change, telling world leaders “you have stolen my dreams and my childhood”. pic.twitter.com/KKpbKpMKsS

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) September 23, 2019

I am not talking here of the “let’s keep our head in the sand” left that denies climate change. Or of the “all we need is for the people to seize the means of production and then pillage the planet on behalf of the workers rather than the bosses” left. Both are annoyingly visible.

I mean the progressive left that understands we are hurtling towards a climate catastrophe engineered by the hubris of a tiny power-elite and our own unthinking, complicit greed. This is the left that knows we need to radically overhaul our societies and priorities, and quickly ween ourselves off fossil fuels, to save life on the planet.

And yet nonetheless, a segment of this left gets angry every time Thunberg appears on TV to set out methodically and movingly why our societies are in the grip of a collective, self-destructive madness. Confronted by Thunberg’s activism, their natural antagonism towards the rich and powerful collapses into a mire of cynicism towards Thunberg herself.

Their arguments fall into three main categories. Let’s assess each on its merits.

1. It’s child abuse!

It is strange to see how some on the left suddenly turn into Victorian prudes the moment the 16-year-old Swede says exactly what they have been thinking but does so to much greater effect. Children, it seems, should again only be seen, not heard.

Thunberg and her generation are living on a dying planet, a planet the older generation – through their greed, their alienation from the natural world, and their spiritual emptiness – plundered and despoiled with no thought for those who would follow them.

The people who organised the pillage are our leaders, an elite that dominate the economy and control our politics and the media. But we all conspired in the planet’s destruction. We bought the unnecessary goods they produced and marketed. We believed in their fairy tale of endless growth on a finite planet. We allowed ourselves to be distracted with mindless entertainment while the planet grew hotter and choked on our pollution.

Our generation carried out a slash-and-burn policy across the entire surface of the planet, leaving our children with no sanctuary while the Earth spends centuries recovering. The most venerated among the grown-ups, our business leaders, wonder whether we can now travel into space to start all over again. And some call Thunberg childish!

The idea that any adult has the right to tell Thunberg and the millions of other children we betrayed that they should simply shut up, stop the strikes and go back to school to finish their studies is ludicrous – and insulting. Teach them what? Teach them the same foolishness, the same selfishness that we were raised on in those educational production lines that turned us into compliant, consumption-loving drones? Do these children really need yet more of the neoliberal brainwashing that prevents most adults from going on strike too to save the planet?

Of course it’s not right that Thunberg has to spend her childhood protesting so that she may enjoy an adulthood. But her choice to sacrifice her teenage years is not the abuse; it is our behaviour that denies her a future, that forces her to spend her youth marching on the streets with millions of other children in an attempt to bring us to our senses.

2. She’s being exploited by the corporate media!

The proof that Thunberg is not to be trusted, it seems, is that she is now receiving so much coverage. The corporate media is owned by big business, so if they are prepared to air Thunberg’s grievances it must be because it serves their – that is, a corporate – agenda. Thunberg is a tool of the rich and powerful, so we are told, whether she herself understands it or not. Whatever the words coming out of her mouth may say, however harshly she criticises those who rule us, the truth is that her arguments cannot be trusted because of the corporate platform on which they are expressed.

Obviously whenever the billionaire media are relentlessly smashing you in the face with a child mascot they're working to manipulate you. Doesn't mean she herself is bad or that climate change isn't real, it just means they're working to manipulate you in a specific direction.

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) September 23, 2019

When I hear this reasoning, I wonder how we would have reacted back in the 1950s and 60s to Martin Luther King. Had all-pervasive social media been around then, would we have been filled with such certainty that MLK was nothing more than the black mascot of the white establishment? Because after all, he received lots of media coverage too. Would we have reacted as cynically to the Selma march as we do to the climate strikes today? Would we have told MLK he needed to go back to preaching to his congregation, just as we tell Thunberg to get back to her school studies?

This criticism of Thunberg treats the corporate media as if it is only a propaganda machine. There is no harsher critic of corporate media than me. I have spent years using my blog to show that even the most liberal corporate media, such as the Guardian, where I worked for many years, is a sham, constructing for us a largely false image of the world that serves the interests of the rich and powerful.

But with that said, I also recognise that the corporate media is filled with real human beings, with journalists. They are overwhelmingly white, middle-class, privileged, complacent and career-oriented. They care little for truth outside the narrow parameters set for them by the corporate culture they operate within.

But these corporate journalists also have dreams, fears and children. Whatever the media’s commercial priorities, its staff live in the real world, where species are dying off in unprecedented numbers, where the seas are rising and filling with toxic plastic, where fearsome storms are brewing, where chaos is starting to unfold. Be sure, many of these journalists do not understand how bad things already are, and the extent to which they will get worse. Like the climate scientists, they have been trained through their education and filtering to be conservative and deferential.

But despite this, they know things need to change. They increasingly understand that the coming climate crisis is a story that they cannot afford to ignore, because it will soon affect their own lives and those of their children.

The journalists themselves are reaching a tipping point. Some, especially the environment correspondents, wanted decades ago to tell us about the dire future in store for us. I worked with some of them. But they were stopped by a corporate culture that was not ready for their “pessimism”. They were too isolated, too afraid of losing their jobs to dare to make a noise. Now they feel liberated because they have found enough of their colleagues think the same way.

Thunberg is getting attention from corporate journalists because she is giving vent to many years of journalistic frustration. She articulates the journalists’ own justified anxieties and does so in a way that they can accommodate in the trivial, man-bites-dog way they were taught was professionalism. Like some benevolent pied piper, this Swedish child with Asperger’s is leading millions of other children to the barricade. This diminutive, shy figure is bold enough to express what we adults have long wanted to say to an elite that isn’t listening. She is a ready made Davina confronting a corporate Goliath.

The suicidal elite at Davos and at the United Nations enthusiastically clap at her criticisms because none of them want to be singled out as the emperor who is naked. Their welcome is beaded with sweat for what she could yet unleash. It is fear driving their applause. If they can tame her, they will.

3. She’s a tool of big business!

As I have pointed out before (here and here), the inevitability of the climate catastrophe we now face was predicted with absolute precision – almost to the week – by scientists working for the fossil fuel industry back in the early 1980s. They knew long, long ago that this moment was coming. The corporations successfully stalled a response for four decades so that they could keep ravaging the planet undisturbed. And we fell for their deceptions and time-wasting over and over again.

This @exxonmobile chart from 1982 predicted that in 2019 our atmospheric CO2 level would reach about 415 parts per million, raising the global temperature roughly 0.9 degrees C.

Update: The world crossed the 415 ppm threshold this week and broke 0.9 degrees C in 2017 1/ pic.twitter.com/sLpOVkwzTF

— Tom Randall (@tsrandall) May 14, 2019

Now the game is up. As those scientists on the corporate payroll secretly predicted long ago, the effects on the planet’s climate can no longer be concealed from the public simply as the short-term vagaries of weather. A different kind of approach is needed.

It goes without saying that the corporations hope to maintain for as long as they can the neoliberal capitalist system that has enriched them and conferred on them almost limitless power. Their best tactic at this stage, given how real-world events are unfolding, is to abandon their denial of a climate crisis and persuade us instead that it is too late for action, that we have missed the boat.

If the sky has already fallen in, then there is no point trying to save the planet. Its fate is sealed. The best response to unstoppable climate breakdown, they will argue, are technical fixes (that will once again line their corporate pockets) to delay the worst effects while we all carry on regardless, partying till the music stops. We will be urged to plunder for our team before the other side gets its hands on the last of the goodies.

There will be plenty more of this kind of argument in the next few years. But there are no signs it will come from Thunberg and the child strikers.

If the corporations are creating or adopting a figurehead to neuter the climate movement, Greta Thunberg is a strange choice indeed. Her forthrightness has been liberating. Her indignation and anger emboldening. Her guilelessness infectious. Her youthful commitment a sharp, shameful slap in the face to our own laziness and world weariness.

We on the left have long prayed for mass mobilisation, for ordinary people to get off their behinds, take to the streets in protest and reclaim their power against the elites ruling over us. And yet when someone finally manages to do it on a global scale – a teenager, no less – all we can do is sit in judgment, scoffing at her and those who cheer her on.

Does it mean, now that she and her protests have exploded on to the international scene, that our corporate rulers will not try to co-opt Thunberg or her cause? Of course not. It is a given that they will seek to redirect these new, dangerous passions in futile and fruitless directions.

Thunberg is not Wonder Girl. She will have to navigate through these treacherous waters as best she can, deciding who genuinely wants to help, who is trying to sabotage her cause, and which partners she can afford to ally with. She and similar movements will make mistakes. That is how social protests always work. It is also how they evolve.

Martin Luther King himself manoeuvred, sometimes clumsily, between the pressing demands for equality from black America he sought to articulate and the fears of a white America that felt its privileges were in danger. It is quite reasonable to argue that he failed in his mission, that his dream was derailed. The United States is still a deeply racist society decades later. With the help of the corporate media, US leaders have largely co-opted MLK’s legacy, reinventing him as a non-threatening totem for a non-existent coexistence.

But despite his failure, MLK’s inspiring words and actions changed the US in ways that can never be reversed. He gave a moral voice to a cause that garden-variety racists now usually feel the need to pay lip service to. He may not have succeeded in ending the institutional racism of the US single-handedly, but that failure does not taint his legacy or undermine what he achieved before he was silenced by an assassin. Certainly, it does not suggest, except to perennial conspiracy theorists, that he colluded with white racists or did their bidding unwittingly.

Thunberg and the next generation have an even steeper hill to climb than MLK. They must change our relationship not just to the worst elements in our societies but to the planet itself. That will require an entirely new vision of our future – and the place where such a vision is most likely to take root is among the ranks of the young, those whose idealism has not yet been crushed by our education and career systems.

Should Thunberg be captured, wittingly or not, by western elites, there is no reason to assume that the many millions of young and old alike joining her on the climate strikes will not be able to recognise her co-option or whether she has lost her way. Those making this argument arrogantly assume that only they can divine the true path. They assume that Thunberg’s words have no life, logic or moral force independently of who she is or whether, like MLK, she is ultimately silenced.

More worrying still, they deny the possibility of a gathering collective wisdom, a rapid growth in consciousness of the kind necessary to save us as a species. The dismissal on the left of Thunberg and the climate protests is likely to sow seeds of despair and hopelessness – the very outcome the elites who are trying to neuter those protests so desperately crave.