Renewables make sense regardless of one's opinion on or believe in or against carbon-caused climate change.
8
Greta Thunberg is courageous, indeed fearless in her enduring quest to speak truth to power. How powerful is this young woman in her jeans and tee shirt who has taken pains to educate herself on Climate Change, then get out in the public sphere and try to influence action. Such a stark contrast to the whines and wheezes, lies and dissembling by powerful men like POTUS, aka our great leader. I'll take Greta! She is standing up for inconvenient truths and speaking clearly to those creating much of the ongoing problems who have the power to do something positive.
10
She is a remarkable human being. It is something to witness when a teenager is more articulate, inspiring and convincing then the president of the United States of America. I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.
14
Graduate high school?
3
Climate change gives the finger to the tenants of broadband capitalism. If coal companies can no longer dig coal, how will entrepreneurs makes their millions? We are going to have to find a way to redistribute wealth without making it dependent on job availability and hourly wages. The stock market will have to gradually shrink and be more tightly regulated. The anxiety stirred up by this level of change is very difficult to contemplate.
The conflict between the practical and the ideal is universal and beyond all final resolution. There will always be things that could be done, things that won't be done, things that should done, and things that must be done. Human beings, individually and collectively tend to sort out such issues when NECESSITY forces its hand. Crisis is the great imperative of human action. Ignorance, procrastination, rolling resistance, and dereliction of responsibility may be understandable -- but outright obstruction by those profiting from the status quo is no longer acceptable (in terms of global warming, weather extremity, conflagration, flooding, and shoreline imperiling sea-level rise). Let's get to it!
5
Greta is a natural choice for the titans of industry as an example of the typical climate
change activist - an uneducated, irritating adolescent, in way over her head, relying on emotional appeals as opposed to the sober, judicial, and realistic leaders we are so lucky to have. That’s why she’s there.
8
Ms. Thunberg puts a sharp point on reality: One's political party/leanings will not give us clear air, water, farmable land, healthy food. What is so hard to understand that the earth doesn't care about our politics? What fools we are indeed!
6
Nothing cold present a visual of the emerging reality as clear as the presentations of Greta and the Trump.
You had the decaying, heavily made up Trump who is already toast, continuing to roll out his prepared sophistic presentation of tortured data, truths, and outright lies which are the reality of the rapidly decaying system of wealth and poverty, or owners and slaves.
And a 17 year old woman who is an unassuming walking, thinking, loving image of the future of Humanity. At least 70% of the present population of the U.S. is under the age of 54. In 20 years, that is 1940, Greta will be 37.
2
For goodness sake. Why are we giving this self important teenager with no scientific training so much airtime? Have some guts and tell her to go away with her simplistic notions. Worse, why are so many grown adults taking notice of her 'disaster/extinction' nonsense. Ok Climate change may be happening but all this attribution of weather and other events to climate change is just wrong and unhelpful. Exactly HOW does climate change manifest itself (so we know what to tackle) and why would that cause or increase fires? Saying that is al CO2 is unhelpful as well as most of the CO2 in the atmosphere now will still be there in 100 years time. Looking at the Australian experiences, we have had worse droughts (we always have droughts or floods) so that is not climate change. However the CSIRO commented that the heating of the Antarctic stratosphere may have cause stronger northerly winds - that is probably climate change. Mankind has survived at least 2 ice ages and subsequent global warming and survived. Are we such snowflakes (despite vastly improved technology) that we'll all perish.
9
Greta Thunberg is right, of course, but I still have to wonder how she got to speak at Davos (and the UN) in the first place, or even how her hotel room was paid for. Such visible platforms are hardly open to anyone who asks for them.
5
America must choose a progressive candidate, otherwise we will either be stuck with Trump, or with a candidate who does not really mean to change the status quo.
2
A young Swedish girl of 17 giving a Public lecture to the most powerful in the World; I take my hat off to her first and foremost to be able to do this in impeccable English. She is right and is shaming all these people, who are clapping a paying lip service, but it won't change anything in my mind unfortunately.
They would 'prefer' to play the Dumb Trump and keep on closing the ears and eyes to her generation!
So long as they can all travel in their private jets, they don't care!
4
Greta Thunberg is very successfully drawing our attention to a very serious threat to our whole planet.
But scientific logic from her is totally inadequate for so important a task. To Greta, a bus going down my high street or my holiday flight is directly equated with the industrial emissions from China!
We are also seeing massive volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, huge forest fires in Australia and S. America. These activities are all producing what we call 'Greenhouse Gases' which are responsible for Climate Change.
I make the case for a QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS of these different emissions, in order that we can begin to assess the threat.
By jumping up and down out of school, dear little Greta is NOT providing even qualitative information. She needs to get back to school - fast!
7
and you urge the David crowd to do what?
It is a sad commentary that so many are so baffled by the fact that the earth's climate has always changed throughout the millennia that they need to follow, lemming-like, a 17-year-old child whose entire life so far has not exceeded a blink of the eye in historical terms. This poor girl, who has had her childhood ripped from her by the doom and hatred instilled by manipulating adults, has already suffered more harm than any climate change will inflict upon her in her short remaining time on the planet. Those responsible for turning her into a parrot of their cause and putting so much bitterness into one so young should be ashamed.
13
So the spokesperson representing the charge for climate change is someone with no direct knowledge of the science, computer modeling, alternative energy engineering. Rather, it is a media-generated, adolescent celebrity - a science boy band. I find this reassuring, as climate change certainly cannot be a problem if this how the issue is being spearheaded.
22
Greta herself has stated in her speeches that she would rather we ultimately listened to scientists and other experts, not her.
12
@LTJ You must not be listening to any of the scientists or experts you mentioned then -because if you did you would be very worried about climate change.
You can start with the most recent report from the US government put out under the Trump administration, or you can take a look at how the DoD views climate change, or find some other non partisan, perhaps international (one or swayed by US politics) science body and see what they say.
Or just take a look at what land is being bought by billionaires and where that land is.
There are many ways to look into the science if you want to.
11
So the spokesperson for the climate-change-is-a-hoax movement is a guy who doesn’t believe in science, thinks coal is our future, and the only stats he believes in are the ones he makes up himself. Awesome.
12
This is why when I face a major problem in my work or life I seek out a teenager to get the solution. Or not.
16
Yet she is hailed as a hero. Who are you, again?
4
She says to listen to scientists. Do you think that’s bad advice?
9
This child has no business speaking at UNGA, let alone WEF. The fact that she is included is pure theater.
25
You got it all wrong. Trump speaking is pure theater. She is more mature than he will ever be. We are all doomed.
76
Yes, our house is on fire and this is an obvious amazement to be seen in Australia, California and Brazil. Not a question of if or a maybe about why but a statement of truth and reality. And this makes me think that we are all doomed because we still are in the questioning and doubt phase of a reality we know and see each day. Doubt all you want, we will all burn together. It’s not a movie. It’s fact not fiction.
404
@Charles In the 60 years following WWII, the earth's human population jumped from 2 billion to 7 billion. In short, the climate is warming faster because so many more people need energy. The left rarely addresses overpopulation since that would rob it of its cause, its chance to flap its very "woke" ethical wings over our fossil fuels use. The notion that we can tame climate change without resolving overpopulation is idiotic. We're targeting 9 billion-plus by 2050. The planet can't support those numbers. That does not incorporate other threats to our food supply such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. How we can support a population of 9 billion, perhaps more? Not on carbon taxes. There's more to this than regulating the planet's thermostat. The value of proven fossil energy reserves the last I read was approximately 30 trillion dollars. Can we erase that sort of wealth from the global economy? We can't and won't. One way or another it's all coming out of the ground. Every ounce, every liter, every gallon. There's nothing anyone can do to stop it. There's zero evidence of the popular or the political will for the unprecedented changes that would be required to achieve any of the Paris Accord targets. The recent riots in France underscore this. We need to go back to the drawing board. Responsible family planning will be essential going forward. This has to be the priority if we're ever going to get serious about solving this problem. In the meantime, we will have to adapt.
31
@Charles
Wow. Australia and Brazil caused by Arsonist intentionally setting the fires. Different reasons but still intentionally being set. California is decades of 'managing' forests the wrong way. Nature would have done it differently.
4
@Bill Brown The left and right.
8
Thunberg is an inspiration to all, especially young people. Those on the autism spectrum must be especially proud of her activism over climate change. Hope Barron Trump and others who are hidden away by their parents by shame gets her message.
118
Those who excuse this kid’s narcissistic and bombastic rhetoric as symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome should remember that in the medical and psychiatric worlds it is a highly contested diagnosis.
2
Ms. Thunberg took pains to distance herself from politics. “This is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics,” she said. “From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left as well as the center have all failed.”
Disagree with Greta on this one. The right not only ignores the science behind climate change (do you really think there’s a global conspiracy among scientists to take away your pickup truck and make you live in cave?) it actively undermines everything that might help, it seeks to increase subsidies for fossil fuels and it seeks to decrease subsidies for renewables. The small orange one couldn’t care less because the only thing he cares about is what impacts him personally and he’ll be dead when Mar-a-lago goes under.
1
Why don’t the people exploiting this kid change her script to reference the major engine of climate destructive policies: Globalization? What environmental protections exist in the recent USMCA? How about enforcement? It is of little use to appeal to the hearts and minds of people in first world countries to take action on climate change when those same people are shipping their manufacturing to countries that can’t afford to think about such things as climate change in their struggle to survive on a daily basis. Teenagers, who have, by far, the most disposable money, buy computers, iPhones, (whose screens, by the way, are made from rare earth materials mined by slaves) video games, and sneakers made in China are not morally superior to to their elders who buy socks made in China at Walmart to save $1.50. And those people are just as guilty as the Walton family who amass billions of dollars doing the same thing. Who can speak of Climate destruction that doesn’t benefit from it in some way. We’re all bleeding in the bathtub and having arguments about who needs to get out of the tub first.
6
Exactly. Globalization and not using birth control are the biggest factors that can be easily controlled.
5
I am beginning to realize that we should turn the decision making for important issues for our nation and world over to kids and maybe adults who are on the high end of the Asperger's spectrum. We have tried lawyers and doctors and con men ( con women are on there way I fear), and religious zealots and we find ourselves on the verge of irreversibly making the planet uninhabitable for our own species. Worse we are already are watching as millions starve, suffer curable illnesses and watch their homes be washed away.
Kids like Greta ( I am 72 so I tend to call anyone under 40 a kid ) need to lead us back from the abyss and toward sanity.
Get corrupt clowns like Trump out of power and turn it over to her and her colleagues.
4
Why exactly do we care what this girl has to say first of all it is obvious she is a tool of an agenda, secondly does she hold some type of degree in in environmental studies or perhaps an economic degree to figure the cost of the changes or maybe she has an engineering degree to explain how best to to tackle these challenges. Maybe I’ll put my 16 year old neighbor up as a financial expert and he can do everyone’s retirement plans. Please stop exploiting this child.
8
I respect what Ms. Thunberg does and in fact had just been wondering where she was. A bunch of hoopla about the sailboat across the Atlantic, a US tour, accolades and then the headlines moved on.
So many support her, find her inspiring, revel in her courage and yet NOTHING is changing because individually people aren't doing much except criticizing governments and corporations for not doing enough.
People leave stores with 12 plastic bags of groceries, dozens of cars idle in line at fast food drive thrus and bank windows when the lobby is open, people throw away more food than the average Venezuelan sees in a month. It seems too much for each of us to do better, to actively accumulate small but significant actions that help the environment. We want others to commit to the BIG solution so we don't have to make the effort. We have to be forced by LAWS to change our environmentally insensitive habits. Pathetic!
We are protestors trying to stop a natural gas pipeline while using propane fuel in the kitchen to cook our food.
Even Greta needs to be called out on something similar. That 'zero emission' yacht that brought her to the US is pretty much 90%+ manufactured out of petrochemical components. From the fiberglass hull to the synthetic sails to the sheets (that's a line, not bedding!) and rigging, that boat is made from carbon, although I guess you could consider it sequestered.
3
You have no shot at being a NYT Pick if you see Greta a little differently than most.
A seventeen year old girl, with no more than a secondary school education in science, if even that. Her parents are entertainers.
Doesn't seem particularly well qualified to be a spokeswoman for halting climate change.
Yet she is a nominee for the Nobel Peace Price and makes the cover of Time Magazine as "Person of the Year." How desperate must Time be to bypass even the scientists who made progress against the problems.
It just seems strange in these times to be using an appealing young person with no background in climate or any science to attract attention.
And I would love to find out how much she is paid for these appearances.
11
Actually, has she finished her secondary school education? I thought she went on leave from that last year.
2
Never give up, Greta. You are awesome.
3
The organizers of the Davos conference could have had the world’s most respected climatologist to speak to these leaders in plain language about the current state of climate change.
Instead, they chose Greta Thunberg.
Hmmm......?
7
It is reassuring and great to see that teenagers are aware of today's biggest global problem. However, Greta Thunberg’s remarks at the Davos Economic Forum show that she has little to no knowledge on the actual science and economics of climate change. Her proposal to stop investing in fossil fuels is unrealistic and possibly unattainable right now.
To this day, it is not smart to rely solely on renewable energy because of its incapacity and inefficiency to create the same amount of power that fossil fuels produce. Renewable energy is not reliable as we cannot control the amount of sunlight, rain or wind we receive. Furthermore, the technology and infrastructure required are very expensive to produce. I wonder how Great Thunberg is going to explain to millions of people living in LEDCs under poor conditions, that they should start using an unreliable and unpredictable energy source that is very costly? It is true that developing Third World countries have abundant renewable energy sources. Nevertheless, the reality is that it is not economical when considering that many people are not as wealthy as people in Sweden.
Although Greta Thunberg shows passion and sincerity when she talks, she fails to address the issue of global warming as her argument lacks scientific and economic support, which is a big problem considering the massive influence she has now on young people around her age. We should not be promoting this type of movement to determine our future policies.
6
It's time to stop fiddling around while the planet burns. From the US to Australia, we are experiencing disasters of an unprecedented size at a rapidly increasing rate. They are undoubtedly caused by climate change, whether Donald Trump believes it or not.
The fossil fuel industry has a stranglehold on this country and, because of the huge profits they make, they are not willing to diversify into renewable energy sources. Any jobs lost in in fossil fuel production will be replaced by work in the renewable energy sector. Solar, wind and hydroelectric energy production will need many workers. It should be fairly simple to retrain the work force to meet new demands.
We need to disengage from OPEC and stop fighting wars for the purpose of keeping oil production and transportation moving. Wouldn't that be a welcome change? Our presence in the Middle East has been a source of tension and struggle for many nations. Let the people of those countries fight their own wars.
Change needs to begin at the top. Until we have a president who understands the importance of climate change, we will not see any progress. It's time to elect a government that knows how important it is and works to make sweeping changes. Please, vote for the Democratic candidate this year!
1
As the a forum of the global political and business elite (and Trump) meet in Davis, with Australia aflame, I humbly offer these words from Kurt Vonnegut with the hope that they are shared for contemplation that leads to individual political action...
“When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if the Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon,
‘It is done.’
People did not like it here.”
3
Greta Thunberg would make a far better president than Donald Trump. Ms. Thunberg is clear-headed, well bred, well-spoken, well-educated, intelligent and articulate in more than one language. That is, she's the opposite of Trump.
3
President Trump “describe[d] climate activists as “heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers.””
What on earth does that mean? The world is beset with ongoing climate calamities and a steady increase in annual temperatures, and Trump is denying this as the work of “fortune tellers.”
We don't even have to look the vast consensus in the scientific community anymore to see that we are killing ourselves. All we now have to do is be willing to open our eyes and look around and observe the natural environment collapsing on many fronts.
3
“Heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers”.
That sounds like a good description of the current crop of people stocking the GOP and still busy building on the flawed basis of Reaganomics, low-tax supply-side stimulus and trickle down theory, small government, and a false belief that free markets can fix any problem.
In reality free market forces seek to perpetuate the free market not the planetary ecosystem that sustains us.
4
Thank you Greta and Somini and the NYT for this story. I hope Greta, that you can take a break soon, and go to college, or university, as it is often called. Taking some time for yourself wouldn't muzzle you, and might be helpful. I read somewhere, some souce like the NYT, that historians of science and engineering have noted that it takes about 50 years for any civilization to radically change from one major technology to another. If this is true, then it will be a stretch for the world to completely move off of fossil fuels by 2050. Also, what the IPCC reported last fall, was according to their newest work, we have about 10 years to really change direction, and make dramatic progress. I don't think they thought in ten years we could get to zero emissions, so they put in a more realitic goal I believe. Perhaps someone here remembers.
David blogs at InconvenientNews.net
@David Lindsay Jr. The article did allude to the answer, saying that scientist thought a 50% by 2030 would allow us to reach a 1.5 degree celsius future. I found a report: Jonathan Watts wrote in the Guardian, on Oct 7, 2018, that the IPCC reports we have only 12 years to get what we will need.
“The IPCC maps out four pathways to achieve 1.5C, with different combinations of land use and technological change. Reforestation is essential to all of them as are shifts to electric transport systems and greater adoption of carbon capture technology.
Carbon pollution would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 – compared with a 20% cut under the 2C pathway – and come down to zero by 2050, compared with 2075 for 2C. This would require carbon prices that are three to four times higher than for a 2C target. But the costs of doing nothing would be far higher.
OMG, Greta is way smarter than Trump? Who would have thought! I’d vote for her for President of the United States. She would solve many of our biggest problems, instead of lying about them.
This is what happens when an uneducated person achieves notoriety. Greta doesnt have the real facts or even have a clue. High school drop out and it's amazing how people blindly follow the words of an incompetent child. If greta was a scientist she would have more scrutiny. But the libs follow her like sharp. Unable to think it for themselves they follow a child that hasn't even graduated from high school. Insane
8
Ummm Greta is following the science as stated by the world's actual climate scientists and IPCC. Which is more than I can say for you.
7
People, you’re witnessing a prophet, right in front of your eyes.
1
A prophet that doesn't understand that we cannot instantly go to zero emissions. How will we explain to our children global famine, the breakdown of societies around the world with the attending violence against the weak, and the true ecological catastrophe of global warfare?
Unfortunately, it is never as easy as it sounds...I would like to see her and others plant a tree or ten everywhere they get paid to speak...
5
Greta doesn't understand that we cannot go to zero emissions because her only experience is with tiny, densely populated European countries. I noticed that when she was wandering around North America on her most recent ego trip, she quit talking about using zero emissions transportation because it wasn't readily available. I know that it wasn't when she was in my state.
I understand the crisis of global warming, but don't think that a tantruming teenager like Greta is the most effective spokesperson. Her tantrums remind me of Trump; both are so selfish that they expect everyone else to jump when they say so.
7
Greta is just a front. She doesn't know what she is talking about.
She just whines about how horrible adults are, and a few of them are dumb enough to give her credence.
8
NYTimes:
[Greta Thunberg's] address began barely an hour after President Trump’s speech at the forum, which barely mentioned climate change, except to implicitly describe climate activists as “heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers.”
The article didn’t mention...was Don in the room?
Great talks, omg, we're so scared.
Nope. Al Gore has been saying the same for decades, and look at how we tremble.
He also was out to say the sky was falling and by now we should all live underwater as the climate has melted the polar caps. And here we are. The NYT building is still afloat on 8th ave and 40th street.
Next!
3
@AutumnLeaf
Enjoy your short life as the frog in the slowly warming pot of water. Maybe you will die of old age before you get cooked. Young human beings alive today and their children will not be that lucky.
The rate of environment change associated with human-induced climate change may seem slow when measured in the few decades of one human life but on a geological time-scale the effects are rapid and dramatic.
For example, a metre of sea level rise by 2100 may seem trivial but you ignore the much larger wedge of sea level rise that will occur after 2100 which is associated just with the emissions that have occurred so far. And we continue to generate more greenhouse gas emissions as if there is no tomorrow the human species would wish to survive. Up to 72 metres of sea level rise is on the cards.
Those who are accustomed to believing the climate denialist propaganda spewing from Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch news outlets and the nonsensical political policies and posturing of the GOP will be severely disappointed by the laws of physics.
If humanity does not rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero and in addition reduce accumulated greenhouse gas levels to pre-industrial levels, then humanity is pointing a loaded shotgun at its own head.
The laws of physics will pull the trigger as a matter of mathematical logic.
The attractive Fox News personality in the tight clinging dress or dapper suit who has been messing with your head won’t be any solace.
3
“This is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics...From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left as well as the center have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency.”
Indubitably. For those of us who still have a good bit of time left in regards to our own life expectancies, this false idolatry that has been passed off as “free market” capitalism is of no concern whatsoever.
Who cares about your fiat money, when it’s only going to be useful as kindling?
“Scientists have said emissions must be reduced by half in the next decade to reach the 1.5-degree target. The opposite is happening.”
The scientific community has tried issuing blunt assessments in the past, only to have their work summarily dismissed by the same corporate hacks who denied that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. There is little reason to believe that the full breadth of understanding, amongst climate scientists across the globe, will ever be shared so openly again.
“The best time to plant a tree is yesterday...”
4
Mother Earth and Greta Thunberg - surely in their various ways, the former with her rising seas and raging wildfires, the later with her innocent's siren call to save ourselves, even the most dull witted must surely be getting the message.
4
@Leigh I find it difficult to understand how "Mother Earth's" response to the causes of climate change equate to "wisdom". I suggest that we should instead be seeking rationality.
I was not at all surprised that people carrying military weapons paraded them on the streets of Richmond VA yesterday in profound belief that they are somehow helping the cause of human freedom. I expected more rationality than that from Greta Thunberg.
1
Unlike humans today, dodos didn't choose extinction.
1
Greta speaks, the world's plutocrats shrug.
3
The President of the United States, trying to gaslight our country and the entire world by pretending the greatest crisis facing us all doesn’t exist. What a disgrace to America and disaster for all human beings.
15
Greta, take your message to New Delhi and Peking, where on a bad day, you can't even see across the street.
4
Brava!
4
This girl admits she needs to get educated, but has also decided that “ the sky is falling” too, eh. Get your Ph.D in the Climatologist sciences, then come back some cloudy day and say BOO!
President Trump reminded DAVOS investors that , over the years, there have been other “Chicken Littles’ “ predicting Doomsday for this or that that have never materialized! He also correctly pointed out that climate change happens on this ever changing planet! Invest in the USA for today, and be happy you did!
4
@Moe - Climatologists have been saying this for 40 years and you aren’t listening. Greta says don’t ask her what to do, go ask the people who have been charting the course we need, the people who already have their PhD in climatology. You are just one more person trying to kick the can down the road. The can has to stop here and now. We are running out of time.
6
Agreed! I don’t think we should to listen to any person under 25 (when in the history of the world has any young person ever made a significant contribution to society?). (Personally I only listen to white men over 50 just to be sure.)
One thing that makes me a bit uncertain here is that the white men over 50 with phds are agreeing with Greta.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that we only listen to old white men without phd:s. That should do it.
2
Unfortunately, the climate alarmists and scientists can't get across the message -- in large part because the science is weak -- so they have to rely upon a teenager who neither knows the science nor the economics involved.
Stop using fossil fuels now? Really. And how would that work exactly? It would certainly make it difficult to fly your jet to Davos.
3
I was hoping ms thunberg would have the guts to address the one issue that has to be the cornerstone of any solution to climate change. The one issue that no one on our national or the international scene will talk about. Human over population and its central role in all of our environmental and most other problems. It seems she has quickly adopted the PC blinders of her more senior political activists brethren . Too bad. This makes her as irrelevant as democrats in this country who push for mass immigration while claiming to care about issues like climate change. You cannot claim to be an environmentalist and not address human overpopulation. They are intimately connected.
2
Two quick thoughts. If you mean equality, education and women’s rights to choose if and when to have kids, I’m with you - those are at the top of drawdown.org’s list of needed actions - but otherwise it’s very unclear what you’re suggesting and why that would go before drawdown’s top 80.
Also - why does immigration matter for overpopulation? You know that the people still exists outside of the US right? (If you’re thinking that the
immigrants might emit less per capita if they continue living in poorer places, that’s just incredibly selfish).
2
I’m simply stating the obvious. The most wasteful society on earth should not be upgrading low co2 emitters to the highest co2 emitters on earth. The US has no business speeding up climate change, and the fastest way to do it is to add to its population by any means. Free family planning, the education and empowerment of women are one of the slim chances we have of saving the planet. Adding to the US population does the opposite. The democrats know better, but their political agenda takes precedence.
The amount of comments on here disparaging Greta for her activism is astounding! I have read people saying:
-She needs to talk to India and China before I will listen to her
-She is being used by the liberal elite
-Why listen to a teenager? Especially a bratty one.
-Her parents wrote a book so this must be a marketing stunt.
It must be easier for people to attack a young person than to look in the mirror and ask themselves if she is right. It must be easier to go on YouTube and find someone offering an alternative explanation while claiming that the world-wide scientific consensus is a plot against the people. It must be easier to blame developing nations instead of looking at country by country rates of current emissions (hey, the US gets to be #1 in something at least #MAGA).
Read the actual science. Read the 6th Extinction for a different look at the issue. Read the Department of Defense reports. Look at what the models predicted years ago and then take a look at what is happening now.
I know it is easier to attack the messenger than it is to consider your own culpability. But it isn’t going to change the fact that not treating it like the crisis it is will create massive amounts of refugees from right here in the US and worldwide while creating global food shortages and supply chain disruptions related to a volatile and weaponized climate.
16
@Sarah Ms. Thunberg sacrificed some credibility today by making certain impossible demands. She risks becoming the Abby Hoffman of global warming.
5
Are you saying the people in India and China don't deserve to hear Ms Thunberg?
The issues in Asia are just as important as in Europe and the US, especially as they are easily demonstrated by simply looking out a window.
I traveled through developed Asia (Japan, Taiwan, HK, Singapore) and mainland China six times in the last 2 years and it is worrisome how lost American are.
I don’t need to tell you how recycling is everywhere in East Asia, how much they invests in energy efficiency, nuclear, and renewable power (except Taiwan). What stands out is how they don’t need a false messiah, a panacea for their society’s issues (except HK).
Maybe it is cultural because East Asia aren’t historically religious and especially not monotheistic so they don’t need a divine messenger to do something. This in contrast with the American left that believes in ridiculous premise such as shutting down all nuclear power, fossil fuel, and hydro power.
1
Well, to comply with her wishes would halt the economy of the entire world. No thanks.
3
so cute that this child gets to air her views. does she understand science? no.
does her fame entitle her to lecture the public? apparently, yes.
God bless the internet
5
The plutocrats won't listen until their bank accounts take a hit from this. Or maybe when their own children turn their faces away.
Young folks, you gotta act up more. Shame your parents, as I did in the 70s, out of using aerosol cans in the house. Even then we knew about ozone depletion. Finally, we did something.
We can, again.
1
All of us or none. Life on earth cannot wait for half-measures and incremental profiteering.
2
Bring the polluters to California to see for themselves the devastation their actions have wrought. Survivors of the huge blazes are today homeless, their children in poverty. Large swaths of once arable land lie useless, yet all we see are still larger and larger SUV's, guns emitting toxic smoke, plastics everywhere, wars and rumors of wars.
4
It's hard to be Cassandra.
1
Ah, the essence of virtue signalling. Fly to Davos in your private jet (with your entourage) then listen to a silly teenager (where did she get her degrees in physics and economics?) yammer on about an impossible solution to a nonexistent problem then get back to business.
2
Ms. Thunberg, I have only one thing to say to you. You go, girl!
5
Great but this is really about more than one person. It's time to give someone else the platform as well and stop focusing on just one girl so much.
1
Davos is an annuel show of how capitalism rules politics.
1
Thus spake Joan of Arc.
And the assembled acolytes roared their approval.
The fact that an emotional teenager is the face of the coming global warming apocalypse is all you need to know about global warming hysteria. Global temperatures go up and down and by the time this young woman is middle-aged, that variability—which one can see for the past 150 years in news articles from around the world, will have cooled the emotional, apocalyptic rhetoric that is so abundant today.
1
Greta Thunberg for world president. There's a choice.
4
Doesn't it strike anyone else here how utterly bizarre and nonsensical it is to be providing a 17 year old a forum like this (not to mention the previous UN speech)? I mean, I was once 17 and let me tell you...
Somehow it's all part of the uncharted times we live in -- Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Greta Thunberg et alia.
1
@TMS horribly false analogy.
1
I. love. this. girl.
6
It is so sad to see her manipulated by her parents & their cohorts into a state of hysteria. When will she take on the biggest emitters like China, India & the USA?
1
That the climate debate still exists is a crushing reminder of the world’s ignorance of science. It’s so much easier and gratifying to turn a deaf ear and call climate activists “extremists” than to embrace the empirical logic of global warming and its manifold effects. We all should embrace the passion and persistence of Greta Thunberg and follow her example—changing our lifestyles for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, so that they may survive. It’s not a message that’s easy to absorb—witness the idiot James Inhofe who brought a snowball to the Senate floor to “disprove” climate change. But the bottom line is this: Humankind must not let ignorance and greed lead to the species’ downfall.
2
"She and a group of young climate activists have called on private investors and governments to immediately halt exploration for fossil fuels, to stop funding their production, to end taxpayer subsidies for the industry and to fully divest their existing stakes in the sector."
But none of that will reduce global warming this year or this decade or probably this century. There are no immediate solutions except to change where and how we choose to live.
1
Here in Oregon, as in many states, the Dems, in the majority here, have initiated carbon cap and trade Bills. The GOP literally walked out en mass saying a) the bill punishes the farmers etc, and b) there’s no climate change. Provisions in the Bill provide compensation for farmers and others hard hit. Timber Unity, the “union” for rural timber interests and anti cap and trade interests were surveyed and most were unaware that the Bill provided compensation for them. It demonstrates the partisan way climate change is being addressed and the power of big money.
3
@MFOregon - it also points to a big hole in the GOP's key argument that they don't want government intrusion.
Government wouldn't have to do nearly as much if the private industries would act responsibly (and by that I don't mean just to flow money to executive compensation and shareholders).
Corporations as "people" tend to the sociopath side. That needs reining in.
1
What I cannot comprehend is why people cannot take the issue right at the core of the "other side's" defense: the cost is too great.
In fact, this situation is a direct result of people simply not paying for what they get. That is: burning fossil fuels creates waste. Waste costs money to dispose of. The person generating the waste ought to pay the money to dispose of it, not "society."
In a free market, we can easily solve this by putting a dollar charge on the thing people are currently doing for free. It doesn't have to be high, and the money collected could be split back out among tax payers (like Alaska does with its oil).
If you do not pay for what you get, someone else is paying for you. That's called stealing. I cannot believe people are complicating this by providing a solution other than paying for what you get.
2
Thunberg, young people, and dedicated older people, scientists, truth tellers, and humanists are the hope of the future.
We can hope that before we implode the voice of honesty and reality will prevail, and that we will work together to stop poisoning our precious habitable earth. Space fiction (expensive and impractical) is not the answer. Restoring clean air, water, and earth is imperative.
Getting rich or living with marketing-driven comforts is crazy foolish. We don't need all this waste, and we certainly don't need to poison ourselves and each other and blame victims for the result.
Climate justice for all!
5
Thunberg needs a timeout. She's a product of the internet and reality shows that demand constant yelling and stern looks. Her prize is a couple of cross Atlantic cruises.
With Africa and India still burning wood and polluting sacred rivers she's screaming at the wrong people.
7
@Jumank
So the answer is to shoot the messenger. Is that what you're saying?
She is speaking to the right people, and what-about-ism doesn't change that. We are the big polluters, as are Europe, China, and India. Certainly not Africa.
#BlueTsunami2020
3
@FeministGrandpa No, unlike what the French did with Joan of Arc, I'm not suggesting shooting the messenger. I said, she's yelling at the wrong people. And she does yell a lot, which isn't unusual for someone on the spectrum. Most of those at Davos are from developed countries with environmental policies that, if implemented, would help the issue.
African households, as in India, burn a lot of wood for cooking and heating.
Climate change people think Greta is the cat's pajamas even though it is likely that her activism is detrimental to her health and well-being. Studies show that her life expectancy is less than 65 years. And suicide prospects are nine times the average. Obviously her health is threatened by the high profile, high tension life she is living. Her father thinks the whole advocacy thing is a bad idea. As for climate change advocates, they lack conscience.
6
@michjas : I'm not sure how her activism is detrimental to her health or well-being. In fact, she has described quite the opposite.
Also, it would be great if you could reference these specific "studies" that show her life expectancy will be low or her suicide rate higher than average. References with links, that is.
1
Greta Thunberg consistently tells it like it is.
She doesn't flinch, she doesn't lose focus, she doesn't sell out. She is a compelling, truthful, inspirational leader on a level we have never had on climate change. Now we either stand up with her, or we don't.
9
Pure religion.
She doesn’t tell it like it is. Immediately shutting down the entire fossil fuel industry and anything else associated with it will put millions of people in developing countries out of their livelihoods. In places like that, where new replacement jobs simply aren’t immediately available and social safety nets are weak or nonexistent, that can literally mean the end of the road for those people.
Suggesting immediate chaos as the solution for future chaos doesn’t make much sense. We all know climate change is a pressing issue, but we’re going to have to accept the idea of muddling through in a controlled way, or nothing will actually end up getting accomplished. People aren’t going to accept the idea of being rendered indigent tomorrow as the only way to prevent future climate catastrophe. Perhaps the only people to whom that option’s acceptable are those rich enough to imagine it can’t actually happen to them.
2
Climate change is absolutely real and it is a life threatening issue for millions of people and thousands of species, humans included.
That said, having a cute and smart kid like Ms. Thunberg, who has nothing concrete to offer, is simply perverse and a function of our media obsessed culture that believes that a few speeches and a march our two changes the world.
Believing in her is akin to believing Trump. Wave your hand, say beautiful things, a couple of rallies, and you have changed the world.
If that’s where the climate left folks are, then we should look forward to our speedy extinction.
The planet will be fine (till our Sun does), and life will exist, but humans will not be around. I think that is reality despite all the yelling and screaming on all sides.
2
@Vechre The sooner the human race is wiped from Earth, the better off Earth will be. Nature has been trying to control this race's unsustainable population for centuries (plague, drought, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, cancer) but the human race keeps finding ways to fight back, continuing to foul its own nest, deplete its resources, breed indiscrimnately and use science to prolong lives without consideration of the quality of those lives. We are parasites on this planet, an infestation. No other species on this planet destroys its own environment.
@Vechre - To say believing in Greta Thunberg is like believing in Donald Trump is meaningless. It is Greta ‘s message that people are “believing” in, if by “believe” you mean “think that what she is saying is backed by credible science and that the predictions of climate science are real”. It is a reality we can see all around us every day if we only open our eyes. Greta Thunberg is not the only one saying this but she is being heard by people who can hear through the whirl and glitter of the lie of constant economic expansion.
Greta is heard because she speaks scientific truth. She gives hope to oldsters like me and youngsters like my teenage granddaughter. Who else speaks across generations like that? Who else is inspiring ordinary people like us to take action to bring change into our lives at one level and to advocate to politicians and leaders on another?
Look a Australia and see the future for all our planet. The only time to change course is now.
Greta is right. Our house is on fire.
1
@Vechre Such condescension. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you actually listen to her, you will see that she has plenty concrete to offer. But you have to listen.
1
The audience is the most capable possible. The messenger is sharp and the message is as clear as a ringing bell. If this leadership elite won't move the ball humankind will suffer the consequences- our best days are behind us.
5
This is a courageous young woman with a clear head and a big heart for her generation. Compared to the nonsense and lies coming out of the mouths of some of our current politicians, she is a truth-teller whose wisdom should be heeded. Shame on the climate deniers. When MaraLogo goes up in flames our unfortunate president might finally notice. Only when it affects his pocketbook, because that's only what matters to him and his outlaw cronies.
3
When a movement is lead by a know-nothing kid you know something is really wrong. She is no different than Joan of Arc except the divine voice she heard wasn’t from God but some adults around her. I wouldn’t follow a movement no matter how good if it involves manipulating kids.
7
@AmateurHistorian This kid obviously knows a heck of a lot more about the subject than you do.
3
Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old with no extensive knowledge on science or economics. She knows no where near as much as the 30 year old men and women running these companies. Even as a person younger than Greta, I know for a fact that coal is much worse than natural gas, therefore we should switch coal to natural gas first before we turn exchange all fossil fuel plants for renewable energy. We technically could switch completely to renewables as soon as possible, but that would be devastating to the economy, especially since solar and wind power is much more expensive and inefficient than coal, natural gas, and nuclear. If Greta were actually knowledgeable she would realize that nuclear power is the cleanest and safest form of power in existence. Nuclear power pollutes less than wind, and it hasn’t killed a single person in the US. The Chernobyl accident occurred 35 years ago in the USSR, which has worse technology than we did, and in 30 years the technology has improved astronomically and the chances of a meltdown are very low. The Fukushima accident was due to stupidity and a tsunami, which is highly unlikely to ever occur in the US. Greta doesn’t know much about the environment or economics, because if she did she wouldn’t be screaming and crying, she would use logos and explain with facts.
5
@John Roberts
The scientists have been using charts and graphs to explain this for years, and people like you ignored them.
The subject needs passion so that people will notice.
I'm with Greta!
5
She says “Listen to the scientists “. Why don’t you?
2
But many scientists point out that nuclear power would be a great way to bridge the transition to renewables. So, listen?
Ms. Thunberg sounds as if she wants to stop the entire world economy right in its tracks. What she should do is go home, graduate from high school and gain some real world, real life experience before she resumes telling the rest of us what to do. It would also be very interesting to know who is funding her adventures.
9
@Larry Greta isn't the first person to raise the alarums. Bill McKibben and those of us delivering the Pachamama Alliance convocations were telling whomever could stop filling their SUVs, the exact same things. We were PD urgent then (over the past several decades); tragically, the inattention of the ruling corporate classes has changed only slightly. The overall SOP trajectory has remained the same. Now, regarding your life-counseling for Greta -- there is no more time for her to indulge in those patronizing suggestions.
This middle aged lady has found that a little 15 year old can inspire us all. Go Greta go.
5
@Iris : She's 17 now.
2
I wish Ms. Thunberg had directly addressed Trump. Of course, he would not have listened and might well have lashed out at her again. She is a remarkable young woman and deserves credit for her work. Period (not because she happens to be on the autism spectrum).
4
When the words "a child will lead us" were written, perhaps the author anticipated Greta Thunberg.
While those with power most likely think in terms of fiscal quarters, perhaps years, and maybe even decades, Greta is focusing this conversation of time on the generations yet to be. I applaud her courage.
She is correct when noting this is actually in our control. But her voice alone is not enough to alter the future of the generations to come. I fear that even her small but loud voice will fall short and that in itself is a calamity we can ill afford.
4
Greta is right. And she is doing something about it. Which is more than any of us are doing by commenting on this piece or turning off the lights when we leave the room.
She will be remembered, if there is anyone left, when all the rest of us are forgotten. Truly, she persevered.
5
I expect most of the business leaders attending the Davos meeting give climate change activism an obligatory sense of approval to conform to the concerns of their customers and perhaps even shareholders. Yet they will continue to do their business in the status quo, responding only to government legislated regulations. A perfect example is the automobile industry whose profits mainly derive from sales of overpowered and oversized vehicles. Nobody is willing to sacrifice profits unless it is mandated to all competitors. And all CEO's and wealthy stockowners seem to agree with this principle. It's wealth protection. Another factor may play here as well and that these powerful and wealthy individuals may acknowledge the long-term detriments of climate change, but assume that their wealth will keep them and their heirs safe and comfortable for decades and long enough for that magic bullet to arrive that saves the world. The notion of a potential irreversible climate runaway does not cross their minds.
5
Climate change is real, it is here and it is man-made. Got it.
“Let’s be clear. We don’t need a ‘low carbon economy.’ We don’t need to ‘lower emissions,’” she said. “Our emissions have to stop.”
Great sound bites. What is missing is the "How"? What will power her microphone at Davos with zero emissions today, since lower emissions are what "we don't need"? Even the sailing vessel she used to cross the Atlantic last summer could not stop on a dime. Does she know what is keeping her warm in Davos, or did she bring Swedish blankets as her way of battling the cold?
Don't get me wrong; her message that we are not doing enough, fast enough is clear and correct. But, demanding the impossible turns off those who might join the parade if she added a touch of realism to her unrealistic assessment that suggests a switch can be thrown to solve the crisis.
5
@The Lone Protester
Sorry, but the scientific community has been trying the reasonableness route for years, and no one in power ever listens.
She sees the truth. Obviously, in spite of your first line, you don't.
1
@FeministGrandpa
Gramps, I do. I just do not understand what she thinks can happen overnight, do you? She obviously does not think that anyone has the right idea. What is it if not incremental change? One can argue about the increments, but that argument still has to live within the confines of the scientific facts and possibilities.
1
Not everyone who calls out this kid’s presumptuous and moralistic attitude is denying climate change. What people most object to about her is the media’s artificial “elevation” of her to the role of spokeswoman for the movement. We can pick our own leaders and spokespeople, thank you very much.
Can we restrict Mr. Trump's foreign travel to represent our country, USA? He is becoming more and more disgraceful, particularly among foreign audience. I still think USA, as country, is not that dumb or corrupt or act like a joker as people might think after listening and watching our President!
Davos: Trump decries climate 'prophets of doom' with Thunberg in audience. He called for a rejection of "predictions of the apocalypse" and said America would defend its economy. (Source, BBC today)
Walter in France. The immediate fallout from putting an end to
fossil fuel use pales compared to what's coming. Appreciate
your age, Vietnam sacrifice, but the present culture of the U.S.
has bogged you down in your thinking.
4
Correction - our home is on fire,
A house is just a building; humans live in homes. Planet earth is home for all humans and creatures great and small. We were born into this world so we have a right to be here.
2
@CK
Considering all that live here with us, we DON'T have the right to burn it all down, however.
1
Hello,
yesterday I saw a very interesting documentation in the German TV (ARD: Das Forum - Rettet Davos die Welt?)... Greta is remarkable and maybe will become the most historic person in this century, who started the paradigm change we need and our children have understood. We need to realize that the global consumer society based on fossil fuels will lead human kind into global suffering. We need to stop this, which at the end means a paradigm change of our global consumption behaviours. We all have forgotten to find deeper fulfilment without technical consumption and should wake up of this illusion. It's about love not either money or consumption.
2
In 2006, Al Gore's lucid and harrowing "An Inconvenient Truth" stated what Ms. Thunberg is saying in 2020. Still all talk and nothing being done.
5
@Dennis L.
Really? Gore said ten years til doom in 2006? How many years have passed? Now, how many years until doom according to Greta? See the problem yet?
@GregP No. It's just gotten fiercer and closer.
It's not just what generating technologies need to be greatly reduced or abandoned but also which alternatives can replace them without creating economic calamity. Nuclear is the best baseload choice if one believes there must be major change in less than 50 years. Until Greta et al support a much greater adoption of nuclear there will be little significant progress.
2
@clarity007 Why are you ignoring/bypassing solar, wind, thermal, and/or tidal technologies? There is at present quite a booming economy in any one of these alternative sources. The press may not report it and this misadministration certainly won't support it, but if -- IF -- this country put its focus into promoting and continuing to support such logical endeavors, the huge problem of disposing of nuclear waste (just one nuclear dilemma) needn't even be under discussion. Instead, this unholy person in power is trying to move us all back into using coal.
The countries that are more successful create economic incentives to move away from fossil fuels. But until we create millions of electric cars or vehicles, conservation is far faster than technology to reduce carbon emissions. My father was a petroleum geologist who was in a four man carpool to work. Even in a 1970's gas guzzler, this is the equivalent of a two man carpool in a Prius today. Conversely, he calculated that if we were to instantly replace one million cars getting 20 miles a gallon with one million cars getting 100 miles a gallon, it would only reduce fossil fuel usage in the US by 1 percent. If we are serious, conservation is much faster than changing technology.
3
What effect will Greta's urgent message have on the leader of the free world? He will brag about creating the greatest economy in world; he will belittle, denigrate and insult Greta and other climate activists; he will explain why America must withdraw from the Paris agreement; he will step up his reelection campaign to make sure nothing is done about the climate crisis for at least four more years; he will ignore or deflect questions from the media about Greta, her message, or the climate crises, confident that his supporters back home are perfectly OK with his delinquency regarding the climate crisis. All in all, the leader of the free world has set an irresponsible example for other world leaders, and for the Republican establishment.
1
There is no escaping what will happen to our planet’s atmosphere and oceans over the next 30 years. The thermal and chemical inertia is enormous. So enormous most people cannot imagine it.
But the actions we take today will make a difference, and we will see those effects in 30 years.
Greta is correct. Blackrock is correct. Microsoft is correct. Even Exxon Mobil knows the truth, and their executives come right out and say it: carbon pricing is the most effective way to keep as much carbon in the ground as possible, at the lowest cost to our economy. Then, combined with many other policy and technology solutions, we can create a sustainable economy.
Our current extraction economy will bankrupt us all and kill people unnecessarily. Blackrock knows this is very very bad for everyone’s pocketbook and investment portfolios. That’s why they are getting out.
4
The best thing for a 16 year old to do is to start living an energy efficient, low carbon foot print life. If you develop bad habits of burning garage size gas tanks of jet fuel, this will be a habit hard to break. Every little bit helps. I live without AC and drive a small car that gets high mileage for the past 35 years. I travel by train whenever possible. I use natural gas, not oil to heat my home in the winter. These are the things that if everyone did would make a difference.
1
@rich williams Kudos! Life Is Possible without using so much fossil fuel -- we own 2 Priuses and for several years I have refused to heat our chilly Maine home with oil; we have a wood stove and burn "Eco-logs" (recycled cardboard pressed into logs). I don't wear clothing made from plastic, e.g. polyester or acrylic. Si se puede, a little bit at a time. An individual and families can make it their goal.
I’m not gonna knock you for owning a Prius, but let’s keep in mind that if we shut down the fossil fuel industry “now”, no more of those are going to be built for quite some time.
Here we go again, Greta the great saying we are not doing enough but not offering any real world solutions. Pushing eco-socialism will not convince those that have to fuel their petroleum powered vehicle that there is an economically viable alternative to the use of fossil fuels. Getting off carbon requires a market based alternative that will undercut the need for oil, coal and natural gas. Is Greta offering it, no. She has bought into the narrative that capitalism is evil and socialism is the solution. It's the left's agenda that she is pushing.
Want a real world solution to manmade carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, drop the social agenda associated with getting off carbon and push nuclear power, electric transportation, solar hot water, and geothermal heating. Make the push economically viable through tax credits for the individual up to 100% (might mean less revenue for the government, but it would convert many conservatives to the cause given it would mean money in their pockets).
11
She is a 17 year old high school student who, like many of her age, thinks the world is simple and she knows all the answers. The Hong Kong protesters should have been selected Time Person of the Year.
9
She says “Listen to the scientists “.
4
She is becoming a ever more articulate activist for this.
Look at the spines of the audience in that picture.
Stiffened. Aware of what they are doing.
10
The discussion of climate change one sees in the press today has degenerated into simple-minded fear mongering, as represented here by Ms. Thunberg. Maybe the climate change fanatics would do their cause more good if they stopped the ranting to concede that that vast majority of the population are going to keep on living their lives using the earth's resources as needed to survive, and that proclaiming the end of the world in that context is just a meaningless self indulgence, and doesn't help progress the understanding of the issue at all.
7
@David Godinez OMG -- you just cemented the case made by Greta and all the rest of us "climate change fanatics" with your myopia. Those comments above belong in the bulging file of Part of the Problem declarations. Read some science.
"... to end taxpayer subsidies for the industry"
Several countries have tried this lately. As far as I can tell, they have all suffered massive protests and been forced to retract.
I don't know how to unwind the transportation knot, but raising the price of fuel is a hard sell at best.
4
@mlbex : The first step in unwinding the transportation knot is to build mass transit that gets people from where they live to where they need to go -- not just to work but also school, grocery stores, church/religious services, cultural events, etc. And then do it in a way that's affordable (even if that means subsidies) and convenient.
This is true not just for intracity/county transit but also for longer-distance travels. It shouldn't take 14 hours by bus to make what should be a 3.5 hour car trip. But that's how our current bus system works.
Then allow development along designated corridors where that transit will run.
1
@Rose Efficient mass transit requires that cities be designed for it. In California, everybody goes every which direction. No matter how many buses you put on the road, it is chaos. It works in New York because almost everybody goes to a central location (Manhattan) in the morning, then disburses to the hinterlands in the afternoon.
In Indonesia they have a "one transfer" system. All buses go to a central depot, and once there, you find the bus that's going where you want to be. Every trip requires a single transfer. Meanwhile, the long distance terminal is next door
She is wrong.
The house is not on fire. The climate is getting warmer, slowly, about 1/100 of a degree C per year.
That's not a catastrophe. It's not even necessarily harmful, all things considered. Sea level rise (3--4 mm per year) is harmful, but slow; growing seasons are getting longer, which is beneficial. Warmer oceans mean more rain, which is good for semi-arid areas where agriculture is marginal.
Holy innocents can do wrong as well as good because saintliness does not include critical thinking.
7
Let’s continue to keep our heads in the sand and do nothing. Our grandchildren will thank us for ignoring the warnings of scientists
3
A comprehensive study of those with ASD conducted in Sweden--Ms. Thunberg's native country-- found that the life expectancy of those with ASD is reduced by as much as 16 years, and their suicides rates are nine times that of the general public.
There are many treatments for ASD that have proven helpful, generally involving multiple and extensive efforts to help sufferers to overcome the large array of symptoms they suffer from. None of these treatments involve becoming a global spokesperson on the matter of climate change.
Those who promote Ms. Thunberg's extraordinary stature in the climate change debate potentially endanger her health and her life expectancy in countless ways. They apparently haven't considered and don't seem to care about her well-being. They would rather exploit her obsession and her vulnerability. They value her contributions over her personal well-being. All who promote her potentially endanger her. Her busy calendar gets in the way of treatment. Her family,h her friends and those who use her to promote their cause will all be responsible if her single-minded focus on climate change proves detrimental to her health and her well-being..
3
Sad those those that do not believe a child can have wisdom .the purity of their thinking has not sold out for gain and is to be respected and admired.at the least listened to respectfully .
2
@michjas And does Greta have a choice in all this? This is Greta's own life decision, and no one is "using" her. No doubt she is fully aware of her shorter life expectancy. If she were thwarted by well-meaning elders, she would be in far worse psychological peril than you could imagine.
Getting anything done is going to take some good old socialism. The government has to step in and manage the reorganization of industries that exacerbate the problem. To do that, the government will by necessity pick winners and losers.
We need to design jobs and living spaces that don't require an automobile commute, but also get you close to where you need to be, with at most one transfer. We need to reorganize recycling so that each throwaway item is marked with a color swatch that clearly identifies which bin it goes into, and we need to make far more of them to go into the green (compost) and blue (recycle) bins. We need automobiles that get much better mileage, and we need to convince everyone else that the wealthy are making their share of the sacrifices.
The free markets have got us where we are. They can participate, but they need massive guidance from governments, hopefully with the permission of the people.
10
Examples of the "progress" we are making in response to the climate crisis:
In Texas, over the next 5 years, under construction or approved: A $10 billion ethane cracking plant near Corpus Christi, 3 new LNG terminals for Brownsville, a $5 billion ethylene processing plant in Orange County, and a $6.6 billion petrochemical expansion in Port Arthur.
from the Texas Observer, 1/15/2020
"ExxonMobil Guyana has made 15 discoveries since May 2015 and begun production in December 2019 from the Liza Phase 1 development."
ExxonMobil corporate website, 1/21/2020
"Nothing has been done?" The only way these investments make sense is if the people running the fossil fuel industry are convinced that nothing *will* be done. And that's a good bet because their portfolio of assets includes not only oil and gas leases but politicians like Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
I have read that a very solid majority of Americans believe that climate change is serious and something must be done. But if we really understand how serious, the Republican Party will be "drowned in a bathtub" in November. I'm not going to hold my breath.
By the way, I see they had to get Greta a box to stand on behind the lectern. How odd. She was already the tallest person in that room.
26
The wealthy don’t worry about their children’s future - they believe that their money will protect them. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong.
18
Ms. Thunberg and this article have made abundantly clear the hopelessness of humanity’s predicament — and our inability and unwillingness to mend our ways rapidly enough. The *only* hope at this point is geoengineering (e.g., releasing particulate in the upper atmosphere, as volcanoes periodically do), but even that would have to be done in the very near term to avert the impending and catastrophic knock-on effects of global warming.
4
Actually, not true. Recent studies show planting millions of trees can potentially fix atmospheric carbon effectively. See articles in: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2019&q=plant trees to remove atmospheric carbon &hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
1
Davos is a good place to do nothing about anything.
The goals of this conference are never met. It is still OK to talk but as Greta Thunberg suggests action is necessary.
It is about politics though. Our politics controls the action or inaction.
Greta decades of experience and well educated scientific background is very reassuring to me, such that I don't even need to listen to her speech to know she is the purveyor of truth!
5
Hooray for Greta!
Speak truth to power!
16
Greta is unfortunately speaking to a lot of people who are there to talk about money and making more of it. They don't give a fig about even their own children's futures. Greta tries to give voice to our young people who are going to be left with the debris of our existence, but trying to give it to the likes of Donald Trump is doomed to failure. He's not listening to anyone except the people who pay him, and that's the fossil fuel industry and the Saudis and the Russians.
10
Response to M.A., Mass. "She's honestly starting to look...."
long before you have. She represents Sweden, where children
learn English starting in grade 1, where government has made
better progress in all areas to safeguard their citizens and the planet. Greta is not at all unrealistic and she and her fellow citizens have the concern and education that can solve the problems in poorer countries that you claim is a barrier.
The U.S. has your attitude because religion and guns seems to
be of paramount importance, too enraptured to do anything
innovative anymore. Who is the unreal culture here?
24
You seem to assume that I don’t believe in climate change and I’m opposed to any efforts to stop it. That is wrong.
But I don’t think it’s helpful to say that we need to stop all fossil fuel use immediately. For those people who are poor and living on the edge, there’s no margin to do that sort of thing. Kind of an inconvenient truth, but one that shouldn’t be ignored if we hope to bring all those billions of people along with us in the quest for a solution.
Another inconvenient truth might include the need for something like nuclear power as a bridging technology to enable the transition to renewables. Yes, there’s a risk. But maybe a smaller risk than the risk associated with abruptly impoverishing those billions of people and provoking them to do something desperate.
Talk and hashtag activism (ie doing nothing and acting like you are doing something) is all wonderful and I’m sure makes the kids feel good, but as a 44-year old let me tell you a little secret, and it’s not exciting, sexy or fun: voting is all that counts. You can yap all you want, tweet, attend rallies. Frankly, nobody cares. The ONLY thing that will make a difference is voting. That is it.
So while I know it isn’t very exciting, the day you turn 18, register, and vote. And then write to your congressmen, Senators and president and tell them you voted and that your number one issue is climate. Ask their views. Push them. Tell them what you demand. As a VOTER. They will listen.
The reason young people don’t get what they want is because they take the time to complain, but they don’t take the time to vote. If everyone under the age of 25 voted, this country would change overnight. But they don’t and they never have.
So nice speech, good on ya, but nobody cares. That’s the truth. If you want to change that, vote.
10
@Mike
In the 2018 midterms more young people voted than ever before, and in higher numbers than any other group.
Voting counts more than most things, but any type of activism matters as well. The more people talk about the climate, the more they share, the more they tell their parents and grandparents, or point out how current events reflect an accuracy of models that could have been brushed aside as hypothetical 15 or 20 years ago, the more they make it a nonpartisan issue, and the more they do so in any way that creates receptivity in their audience. All of that matters.
When one acts like it is a crisis all the time, as opposed to just acting like it is a crisis when it is brought up, people do start paying attention. And when you start to believe it is a crisis, you start changing your behavior and demanding more change from the institutions around you, and that right there might even lead to more people voting.
6
Activists like Greta Thunberg inspire young people (and old) to vote by keeping the issues front and center!
4
@KJ Neffertuti “Activists like Greta Thunberg inspire young people (and old) to vote by keeping the issues front and center!”
No, no they don’t. Retweet? Yes. Vote? No.
People in powers, mostly boomers will not be living long to suffer the extremes of the climate.
Young generation of the Greta will suffer as so my kids.
I support all of them and encourage to take the argument and fight(if necessary) to the current rulers of the world.
There is only one way to save our planet; by learning science, accepting and working to find better energy sources.
10
I recently learned that Citibank provides loans (among others big banks) to fossil fuel companies. I'll be moving my business elsewhere as a result and encourage others to do the same. Folks, we have to start acting because the oligarchs are not getting the message.
31
We are not going to avoid climate catastrophe.
Runaway climate disruption is already here.
Just ask any of the species we’ve exterminated with our fossil-fuel induced global warming.
We continue record consumption of fossil-fuel based energy.
We’ve already triggered unstoppable warming of at least 3.5 deg C by 2100.
The destruction of the biosphere has already gone non-linear.
I support & applaud Greta and others like her, only for improving the result for the lifeforms to remain after we’re finally extinct.
14
In support of my 3.5 deg C by 2100 comment.
MIT’s Jon Sterman
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-11-21/climate-change-presentation-by-mit-s-sterman-new-economic-forum-video
It seems to me that, what could become a very popular practice, would be for people and corporations to stop paying their taxes until governments, and those recipients of taxpayer funds stop using tax payer money to fund fossil fuel exploration and production. It's radical. Lots of good uses for tax money would also suffer and yet, how else can the little people stop this?
Basically, we say, Not with my money, you don't!
2
IF you have stock portfolios with carbon-based companies -- dump them. Look into sustainable investments if you invest.
Write letters to companies that pollute. Complain -- and offer constructive alternatives.
Donate to appropriate nonprofits that work against the companies that are destroying the planet.
Look around at your immediate community -- what can you do to have an impact that is positive?
Don't accept plastic bags if your grocery store is still using them -- ask management about customers using reusable bags.
Consider the type of vehicle/s you drive, and how much.
Consider your consumption, purchasing, repurposing.
Realize the amount of extraordinary power that oil exerts on the country -- and the extraordinary damage being done. If the house is truly on fire, then what can you do to bring a firehouse and help put your part of it out? Thank you.
11
We need to stop voting with our stock portfolio. We need everyone to take a look at what the EPA is doing;
Allowing companies to spew more methane gases, allowing the coal companies to seep more toxins in the waters, rolling back on impact studies for any infrastructure changes. This administration doesn’t care.
5
And the children shall lead us.
10
She is such a courageous person.
16
The wealthy at Davis simply do not care about the rest of humanity. And why should they? They are rich and they will be dead before long.
7
There's nothing I love better than seeing Greta Thunberg get media exposure. It drives conservatives crazy.
More Greta!
18
Aviation travel is growing exponentially around the world. And studies show it's the same 5-7% people doing all the traveling (this is above and beyond the 1% in corporate jets represented at Davos). I'm tired of people criss-crossing the world in corporate jets lecturing me about climate change (cough, cough, Google "Environmental Summit"). But the real change that would slow-down the unbelievable growth of aviation travel would be that 5-7% percent, many of whom I'm willing to bet are NYT readers. Who here has actually cut-back on air travel? If you say you buy "carbon offsets" - the research on that is pretty mixed as to effectiveness. It appears to be mostly greenwashing. In my experience in talking to people about climate change, nobody wants to make any personal changes. The evil fossil fuel companies wouldn't still be investing in drilling if aviation travel wasn't growing by leaps and bounds every year. They wouldn't be investing in drilling if more people had switched to electric cars by now vs. Ford 150s continuing to be one of the highest selling cars in America. They wouldn't be investing in drilling if people had economically pressured companies to stop selling everything in single-use plastic. We have met the enemy, and it is us.
11
Check out “Flight Free US” and then take the pledge as we have in our home. More and more people are refusing to fly for environmental reasons.
Amtrak is a pleasure compared to airlines anyway.
4
Why is the giant elephant in the room ignored? Ya think 7,577,130,400 might be too many people? Although I know the climate dynamics of our solar system (let alone the universe) is well beyond the understanding of contemporary science and technology, and we earthlings are several decades or centuries away from that level of technological understanding. Carbon restrictions will be designed by the world's governments to continue the system of allowing societies elites with their mansions, fleets of vehicles and jets to consuming far more than the average citizen. Until then, population control should be at the top of the list of mitigation strategies.
26
@TEXAS INFIDEL Thank you so much for bringing population control into this forum. It is at the root of so many social and environmental tragedies and for some very misguided reasons (religious, political, etc.) it is not taken for the major problem is already is, and will become greater in the very near future.
3
Why aren't these massive conferences being held via the medium of teleconferencing?
Too many people, including the climate activists, create unnecessary carbon footprints via their travel itineraries.
It would be nice, if these people lead by example.
12
Greta is wonderful. We need more like her. We must follow her and do what she says to do for the sake of the earth and all earth's inhabitants.
16
It’s amazing to see people deny her message as if she stands to profit from it,
Where are all the so called Christians that are supposed to protect God’s green earth?
When your states are in desperate need for funding due to climate disasters don’t come crying to the rest of us.
12
Nope. More carbon does not mean a greener Earth, net-net. Greener Arctic, but much browner everywhere-else.
1
God’s green planet is getting greener with more CO2 in the air that’s a fact.
Why is she even allowed to speak to all these people who flew in on their private jets. Since India and China are the world's largest polluters what does she propose doing about them? this is taking virtue signaling to the extreme.
9
@samten171 Why? Somebody's got to do it.
The biosphere, as we have known it, is terminal.
Daly, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly profits as taught in business schools have to be modified to focus on long term R and D.
Corporate and religious bribery has to be taken out of government.
National and international programs have to be put in place.
The biosphere, as we have known it, is terminal.
7
Greta's anger and passion is widespread in her generation, and rightfully so. My greatest hope is that as they come of age, there will be enough awareness and will to push the necessary changes forward. In the meantime, I urge anybody who is concerned about climate change to become active politically and speak up!
Greta is correct that no government will make the changes. Only people working together to force change can do the job.
5
@John
Umm...no government will make changes so people (which?) will have to "force change" (how?).
Is this part of the oft-observed tendency of the Left to totalitarianism? Or possibly this comment strayed here from the 2nd amendment discussion?
Why are the fossil fuel companies (and our society in general) investing in finding new reserves of gas, oil, and coal? We already have way more "proven" reserves than we can possibly burn without completely ruining our climate!
Why isn't that money being invested in wind, solar, and other clean energy sources?
Time to divest from all the fossil fuel companies and the banks that support them.
24
She's talking to people who largely have put money and their personal comfort ahead of concern for anything else. Trying convince them to change their behavior that may impact on these out of concern for others seems like a hopeless task.
Oh sure, they'll make themselves feel good to listen to Greta but does anybody really think that if they willingly ignore the top climate scientists in the world they will believe her.
18
@Steve Yeah, but it would be nice to imagine that she embarasses some of them......
What strikes me every time I listen to responses to Thunberg's speeches is the extraordinary measures which columnists and politicians take to craft language that avoids her inescapable logic and the hard science that informs it.
Phrases like 'common sense' and terms like 'centrist' or 'moderate' are used to suggest that a kind of balance may be struck--and should be pursued as a matter of public policy--between what are termed her 'extreme' or 'radical' prescriptions and continuing as modern society has for the last century.
Let's be clear: as a matter of science and logic, refusing to act decisively and without further delay is tantamount to a cancer patient refusing a treatment proven to save her life because her hair will fall out.
What Thunberg insists we must do would, indeed, require massive disruption and perhaps fundamental change not just to domestic and foreign policy, but to legal concepts related to private property that have been considered sacrosanct since the time our Anglo and Penninsular forefathers threw the Native Americans off their land.
Perhaps its poetic justice that it's the land itself--in concert with the air and sea--which will force us to reconsider everything we have done since.
53
Since when do we start following the advice of children in international affairs? The liberals will exploit anyone to advance their agenda. Greta is being exploited.
15
No more so than any child athlete or film star.
3
Please pay attention to what is actually happening. We have a carbon dioxide blanket in the atmosphere that is created by burning carbon based fuels like wood, coal, and oil. When burned, carbon dioxide and heat are the result.
Carbon dioxide cannot escape our atmosphere. It just accumulates, building a larger and larger invisible gas blanket around the earth. The sun heats the earth and water and the heat created is retained by the carbon dioxide “blanket”.
To solve this chemical problem, we must switch to non-fossil sources of energy like wind and solar power. We also must plant trees and take other steps to absorb the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
This is not a matter of religious “beliefs” or politics. It’s a matter of life and death. See what is happening around you. Open your eyes to basic chemistry. Stop choosing politics over facts, manners, and traditions. They are blinding you to reality. Read the scientific reports generated by climate scientists. There’s plenty we don’t know, but the basic science is clear.
1
@Rea Howarth
Wow, sounds scary. If only there was something that could USE carbon dioxide. Maybe as an energy source? Maybe even benefit from it huh? That would solve the problem wouldn't it? Do you not know that carbon dioxide has another name? It is called Plant Food.
Greta Thunberg, among others, is absolutely correct. We need a new paradigm. We need to move decisively away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy as quickly as possible. We have roughly 12 years to correct this problem before it's insurmountable. 12 years, not the pathetic slow-walking deadline of 2050. Any politicians who can't see this deadly crisis for what it is need to lose their office and be replaced by progressives. Any businesses which profit from the destruction of our planet need to transition into sustainable behavior or be replaced.
More specifically to this event, I find it revolting beyond words that the world's wealthiest annually fly their fleets of private jets (with their huge carbon footprint) to this exclusive event in Switzerland to rub elbows and conspire, while their depthless greed and business actions disrupt and destroy everything around them- economically, environmentally, and politically. These people are parasites. Our environment and planet is not dying, it's being murdered- by people like this.
16
I hope she didn't fly to the conference.
7
If you knew anything about her, you would know that she never would.
I can’t help but feel as if the setting just tokenized Greta as a means of escaping accountability.
Having her speak gives the air of balance against Trump while she holds no actual power. If Greta didn’t attend it would be much easier to (rightly) villainize the conference for it’s lack of action, but now instead it’s given a false sense of moderation.
7
I am stunned by many of the comments and had to check several times that I wasn't reading "FAUX" or Breitbart.
It seems that many NYT readers do not understand that we have reached the tipping point. You do not try to solve an emergency with baby steps. The argument of "but so many people will be out of work" is not convincing because if we do not act now, our life support system will not be able to keep us alive. How to deal with people who will lose their jobs? For crying out loud, we have industries that are making billions of dollars destroying a livable earth. It's about time they share the profits with us and help transitioning individuals out of destructive industries.
And yes, population control must be addressed, as well as a ton of other issues. But the most pressing right now is to get out of fossil fuels and animal agriculture.
20
As a child during WWII I witnessed rationing of many items in order for our country to have all hands on deck to support the huge production of implements of war.
We had coupons for coffee, sugar, shoes, gasoline, tires....no new cars were produced during that war. People had Victory Gardens in their front yards.
When a call was made for tin people donated household products in great piles.
Our world is in greater danger now due to climate change, and alleviating it or slowing it down is a all hands on deck situation.
Hard to imagine people willing to make the sacrifices that are called for. Can't even get people to stop using plastic bags at the grocery store - plastic bag companies might lose some jobs.
I don't have much hope that enough is going to change in time to avert more climate catastrophes. I won't be around that long, but my grandchildren will.
47
She is asking people to sacrifice in order to save the world. It's not the left, the right, the center, the third world, the rich or the poor- its everybody and everything. Yes, to immediately stop using fossil fuels is incomprehensible as that would put almost everyone out of business and lead to a total breakdown of every society. But, as in eating an elephant - a bite at a time will get it done. Soldiers are asked to fight and possibly die for their country and they do it willingly because of their beliefs that their country is worth saving. Why aren't we thinking like soldiers of the environment - isn't the world worth sacrificing and saving? If gas becomes expensive- ok, drive less, get some transportation infrastructure projects going(jobs) get rid of giant SUV's and trucks thats aren't necessary - I see carpenters, plumbers, electricians, masons in other countries driving smaller more efficient vehicles- why not here? There are many ways to get this ball rolling. Greta is saying start , do something, get it going now. Its not easy but its necessary.
26
But see here, I totally agree with you that small steps are exactly what we need to do. That’s precisely what she’s rejecting. She wants us to stop all fossil fuel use pretty immediately. Millions of people holding jobs in those industries will lose them from one day to the next, and it’s laughable to imagine, particularly given that she gives no concrete proposals as to how it’s to be accomplished, that some sort of ready-made job will be immediately available the day after that for them to pick up, manufacturing solar panels or whatever else.
The economic interests of the world’s poor are going to have to be factored into this transition or else it simply isn’t going to be accepted by billions of people, and that will be enough to sink the whole attempt.
I haven't heard Ms. Thunberg offer any specific suggestions on how to replace fossil fuels, perhaps because these technologies don't exist. Scientists have been trying to perfect nuclear fusion for decades without result. There is currently no way to power a first world, industrial life with sustainable energy. Is she ready to sacrifice that lifestyle? If so, she can begin by not using fossil fuels to heat her home in Sweden. And if she really thinks the big bad capitalists have stolen her childhood, she should speak to youngsters growing up in Congo, Haiti, Bolivia, Bangladesh, etc. It's a sign of our times that a child who knows little other than her own fear and anger can lecture the great minds that have created the modern world.
12
On the contrary, the technologies exist to cut fossil fuel use immediately. Educate yourself.
She didn't give you a list because everyone else in the world is well aware of what is available.
20
Maybe if countries actually properly funded sustainable energy projects we could actually get somewhere. Not to mention the technologies DO exist (have you not heard of wind/solar/hydro power???). But the amount of lobbying /earmark legislation that has gone into sustaining the fossils fuel industry, and brainwashing many on the negative effects it has, is very hard to overcome. Read about how the fossils fuel industry knew the environmental effects were bad 3 or 4 decades ago, and yet instead of shifting to new energy, they altered their findings to help convince government that they weren't the bad guys. And I wonder why?? Couldn't be because they've made billions in the meantime...
9
@Elissa F
Technology to cut fossil fuel use? Yes, slightly. Replace it? Immediately? No time in the foreseeable future—unless, of course, we turn to nuclear. Alternatively, we could start by giving up the internet (and the NY Times online), e-commerce, cell phones, air conditioning, winter heat above 68°, and UPS and Fedex.
Here in NY, we're moving in the other direction, by closing down perfectly functional nuclear plants.
But the numbers are simply staggering, both in the amount of generating capacity needed and the humongous cost of a (designedly) inadequate set-up based on solar and wind. Perhaps we will follow Germany's path, where we will find it necessary to eventually add back in fossil fuel plants even while raising the cost of electricity to nearly double that of NY.
2
How can we not hearken unto this pitiful child who walked across Europe and climbed the Alps in bare feet to bring us her wisdom and admonitions?
To paraphrase Wilde, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, perhaps not as much at the puppet-child as at the so-called grown-ups bearing her solemnly in ceremonial conclaves.
9
This activist is doing a disservice to an important issue. I’m very concerned about climate change, but when I look at Greta I see an obnoxious ill mannered teenager who should be sent to her room. She should learn to speak with some respect, and not just yell and scream and demand like a brat.
15
We have a 73 year old president that behaves far worse, and with less substance.
12
I believe respect must be earned. It doesn’t just happen based on the size of your bank account.
2
@DRS And why is that? Did anyone listen to Al Gore? No, he was dissed for other reasons. Finally, we have to stop and listen to some loud yelling.
It's gone way past time for quiet respectfulness and a pat on the little head and a lolly, for being nice.
Why do we need politicians and corporations to “change” and “act”?
It’s solely us who are the executives.
It’s the ordinary people who change the world for the better and for the worse.
We, with our consumption and behavior, are the ones who are in charge to change and act.
It’s too easy to applause Greta and say “yes!”
And then drive with daddy’s car to the next party. Fly for a fun weekend to Berlin. Shop at H&M. Buy fashion just for insta. Eat at Macdonald and KFC after your Friday’s for future demonstration.
Yes, Greta lives radically climate friendly.
But 95 percent of us do not.
12
Your comment should be front and center! Thank you for being so clear and accurate!
2
Oliver, the time to act in small individual steps was back in the 1980s when saving a few gallons of gas could have made a difference.
The atmosphere is currently greater than 412 ppm CO2 and we need enormous changes to prevent catastrophe. It's time to involve governments etc.
it's actually past time to massively sue the industries that lied and blocked us from managing CO2 waste effectively. I reckon some $90 billion of Koch Industries' $91 billion could make a noticeable difference in curing what ails us.
4
@Elissa F
Elissa, I absolutely agree with you that it's no excuse to let politicians and corporations off the leash. And yes there has been huge misinformation and lobbyism to promote the wrong lifestyle. But today consumers have the choice. Politicians and corporations are entirely opportunistic. They exactly do what they think what brings them most votes or most money. For now they sell their trucks and SUVs and fossil heatings – because a majority of people exactly still wants this. On the other hand in Germany for example: The biggest grocery corporations Aldi and Lidl (multi billion dollar comps) changed their product range to now 30 percent organic products. Not because they suddenly became responsible, no because they see higher margin and demand in these categories. Everything in this world follows the money, even responsibility and – our future.
1
After she gets back from China and India let me know. Otherwise, I'm not listening to this pampered kid.
13
This is just kicking the can down the road. Americans, Canadians, and Australians say, “We’re not going to do anything substantial until China and India do something about their emissions. They’re way higher polluters than us.”
The Chinese and Indians say, “The US has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world, with Canada and Australia not far behind, and they want US to do something about OUR emissions?”
And so on. The can is kicked a little further down the road.
4
Yeah. Keep your head in the sand. Meanwhile China intends to become the world leader in renewables in a decade.
2
When you are 17, you basically know what’s right and wrong. You just haven’t been worn down by compromise, selfishness and apathy yet. What she says is right.
40
No leader will truly listen to her. They will clap and admire her but keep on burning fossil fuels- Revenge of the previous mass extinctions to cause this coming one, smh...
1
Want to save the planet Greta?
Get the money out of politics and back into the sustainable resources our ancestors gave us.
Don’t focus on bringing truth and justice to Davos; focus on bringing green jobs and clean water to Flint Michigan.
Think globally, act locally.
Bernie/Tulsi 2020
6
She's just a kid and if she wants to save-the-planet, she should start with China and India first, not the US. Sad to see so many people buying into listening to a high-school kid.
12
Even sadder to see so many so-called adults listening to the 5-year old in the White House.
2
History - as long as it is written anyway - will report that a child told us the truth while our leaders and our news media pandered to our child-like need to avoid it.
38
I really doubt that anyone can penetrate the greed that is represented at Davos.
26
It is utterly incredible that a 17 year old Swedish girl is significantly more mature and wise than the 73 year old President of the United States.
45
What is conservative about destruction?
In fact destruction is the exact opposite of conservative.
10
@Marie
Those who brand themselves "conservatives" today use that label to provide themselves a cloak of legitimacy. What they are really about is power and profiteering as evidenced in what they do. When you hear "conservative" think "power" and "profiteer" then what they do and say makes sense.
P.S. look up "profiteer" or "profiteering" before replying about denying anyone a fair profit.
6
SHE is the one we’ve been waiting for. Congratulations, Kids and listen to Her. Your future depends on it. And, please VOTE as soon as you’re “ legal “. Straight Democratic Ticket, each and every time.
18
"our emissions have to stop" does anyone actually think that is possible? c'mon.. That is why we can't take a 17 year old seriously
6
Stop investing in fossil fuels immediately? And how does Dr. Thunberg propose that the global economy continues to function? Silly theater, virtue signalling, child abuse all rolled into one. She must have degrees in physics and economics right?
How does she think everyone in attendance at Davos got there? They hiked? Emissions are not going to stop rising anytime soon, so the world needs to quit pretending and focus on mitigation and adaptation on the very off chance we have a climate catastrophe (we won't) and quit lionizing a poorly educated stage produced girl who should be in school.
11
I feel much better now. Ralphie says we won’t have a climate catastrophe.
Thanks Ralphie!
3
@Jason Ralphie knows because Ralphie "must have degrees in physics and economics right?"
Greta shouldn't worry, she makes a case against politicians when someone should point out to her the slow but steady adaptation of electric cars. Building an energy infrastructure that slowly reduces the transport of energy in liquid form in exchange for the transfer of energy by wire will do a heck of a lotta good for everyone. Especially for the environment... and the energy companies! You know how much cost there is in dispatching fleets of tanker trucks versus just hooking up your generators to the power grid and watching the meter turn green? Remember.. before there was the 'green' initiative, 'green' meant (and still does mean) profit!
I bet if someone were to spell this out for her she'd stop wasting her time scolding politicians and start singing the praises of Exxon and Chevron and all the other folks at the round table.
But don't tell her about asteroids, coronal mass ejections or gamma ray bursts. Those we can't fix, yet. Maybe in thirty years we can shoot down an asteroid.
3
The question is: why is Davos stlii a thing? Rich and powerful people iwho tell one another how wonderful they are and who in any case have 5 year plans who will ingore Ms Thunberg's advice. They will retire, to Mars it seems now and let the planet's problems to others.
14
Who is advising Greta in her use of authoritarian language? Why does she think that “demanding” things is persuasive? She is more likely to put people off than persuade them with her style and language. Maybe she feels she doesn’t need to persuade. Her style gives support to the fear that some climate alarmists are actually authoritarian opportunists. The risk from climate change is real, but some of the self-appointed prophets have hurt the cause by either overstatement or by being obnoxious, divisive and supererogatory.
14
The sentiment is nice Ms. Thunberg, but is completely unrealistic. Pretending human beings are going to magically be happy with their situation because they suddenly lost their fossil fuel based job is just plain ignorant and wishful thinking. Scientifically speaking, there is a bigger chance of Hilary Clinton bearing Donald Trump's love child than folks voluntarily stopping investment in fossil fuels at the present time.
We need a NEGATIVE carbon economy, not a low carbon economy. We need a solution that cools the earth to buy us more time like increasing the reflectivity of cloud cover over the ice sheets to reverse sea rise. Only technology and profitability will be able to help us get there because that is the nature of humanity.
7
Who could have imagined that Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old high school dropout with acknowledged autism issues, would magically rise to become an international spokesperson for the environmental movement?
Is she the green Joan of Arc? I don’t think so.
Is she, as an earlier NYT article suggested, “a world political leader?” Hardly.
Consider the fact that her father, an actor, and her mother, an opera and cabaret singer, have co-authored a book dealing with environmentalism and sustainability. In her speeches Ms. Thunberg reads from scripts undoubtedly prepared by her parents and perhaps others, in tones and with dramatic pauses and emphases undoubtedly coached by her parents. (Lots of her speeches are on YouTube so you can check this out for yourselves.)
Someone is paying for Greta’s travels, public relations and related services; it would be of interest to know who. Perhaps someone who believes the words of a child will somehow be more persuasive than science, since scientists are still far from being able to predict, much less control, weather and climate phenomena.
9
I think the fossil fuel industry and other core industrial sectors need to ban together and sue Greta Thornberg and other radical environmentalist from spreading hysteria based a scientific theories that far from proven. Not disputing global warming here, but the hysterical prediction coming from these radicals.
2
Scientists don’t know nothing!
1
I feel sad for Greta and all young people.
They're going to experience the rapid onset of anthropogenic mass extinction, which goes way beyond manmade climate change.
They'll see the massacre of the oceans, the Amazon rainforest and many other biosphere features that have created a livable planet.
They'll see the incineration, poisoning, collapse, death of millions of animal species, as was seen in Australia recently.
Their air, land, and water will be increasingly toxified by manmade chemicals.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring will arrive.
And yet the juggernaut of capitalism, consumerism, and human population growth will relentlessly increase, doing to the living earth what cancer cells do to a human body.
29
Give Greta credit for trying to keep the pending calamity from the poisoning of our environment in the headlines. The urgency in her message needs to be heeded before we sentence our children and grandchildren to cruel and inhumane punishments for the crime of refusing to sacrifice and care enough about their future. Go Greta!
242
@RLS I looked for Trump's speech.
The search turned up many reports stating that Trump bashed Greta and environmental activists as "radical socialists."
He defended the institutions that are causing the environmental crisis -- of course, because they help sustain him.
12
@RLS You certain that was Trump speaking about "hope, optimism, solutions -- and care for the future"? Doesn't sound like him.
Also, the article says his speech was given almost an hour BEFORE Greta's.
4
@RLS - "Full of hope and optimism, solutions and paths – and, most especially, care for the future."
I've said that you will never hear a conservative speak about hope and change except for a hope for more profit and changes that allow it (i.e, no regulations), except for the hope to see others hurt. And that is exactly the kind of hope and change he spoke of, which fits the audience there perfectly.
"America is winning again like never before,"
"To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,"
"They are the errors of yesterday's fortune tellers and we have them and I have them and they want to see us do badly, but we don't let that happen,"
5
Good for Greta! I feel for her and her generation -- my daughter is one of them. We have used up planet earth and handed them a sorry and despoiled version of what we inherited 50 years ago. That said, Greta needs to realise that the best way to motivate politicians is to put their jobs at risk. She should be pushing her followers to VOTE according to their beliefs. I fear too many young people just abandon the democratic process altogether, believing nothing will change. The same applies to those will be old enough to vote is this year's absolutely critical US election. Don't like their policies? Vote them out! Collectively, you have the power to change the world. Haranguing and lecturing and protesting can only go so far. VOTE!
17
Bravo, Greta. The vast majority of people in the world have some interest in not accepting the truth of our current trajectory with regard to climate. Some simply because it's too scary. Some, though, because they calculate that they won't be among the victims. They should not be so sure of that.
9
Greta is a great voice we need and must hear.
Plastics from every industry are and have been writing our obituaries for decades yet with no corporate consequences. Medical waste has never been addressed.
Cattle ranchers are pushing wild horses off their natural habitats in the west to produce beef on lands that have been protected by the Federal Government yet sold out under the Trump Administration. A few horses will end up in a preserve but most will be shipped to Mexico for slaughter and our buddy Canada flies our wild horses to Japan for slaughter in crates.
Trump is rolling back EPA standards by the day because clean air and water don't matter to him compared to profits. We can have both!
Our southern coast is always imperiled by warming oceans and in California, wildfires have devastated the state and will continue to do so.
These awful things I've listed are just a few of the issues that keep me awake at night.
No one will change their ways until "IT" hits the fan in their own lives and many will deny it even then.
9
I will be upfront and honest: I think very highly of Greta. I think she is the voice that a movement has been searching for. She is eloquent, sharp, intelligent and has a level of charisma that is magnetic. But, this near hero worship and demonization of her has to stop. We need to stop attributing expertise to her that she has not acquired (nor does she pretend to have). Her voice is not the end all be all about the environment. She's an icon. A celebrity. A breath of fresh air, yes, and we as a society are intoxicated by celebrity. Greta is not an expert, she is not a scientist. She's a voice, people. She, if you will, is an environmental "influencer." Both sides need to not lose their heads over her: praising her too heavily or undermining her too much. Rather, she's a simply voice--an amazing one--but a voice nonetheless. The scientists are the experts. They are who we should be turning to, not Greta, for answers.
9
Those who control the fossil fuel industry are wealthy because of that control. Those industries that use fossil fuels have also benefited financially form its use. Consumers of fossil fuels live better lives because of the availability of fossil fuels.
There are simply too many people who benefit from fossil fuels to get governments to do much about Global Warming.
When I was young, I read an article titled The Tragedy of the Commons. The Commons was available for all in the area to use. They could collect firewood or grase a cow or whatever. Eventually someone grased two cows and benefitted from the additional milk it produced so others began to grase a second cow and then a third and so on.
Everyone was better off financially until the Commons was destroyed. Then they all lost.
Greta is trying to save the Commons before we destroy it. We need to listen to her.
16
Meanwhile Trump talk up fracking and calls climate activists and scientists "profits of doom" and centrist Democrats push incrementalism and half-hearted policies.
Unless we have leadership committed to effectively addressing the and being willing to stand up to the powerful fossil fuel industry, we will watch civilization unravel amidst climate collapse and subsequent famine, mass migration and war.
2
Greta Thunberg is partly right, but also too late. Substantial global warming is already part of our future.
There is an excellent book by Elizabeth Kolbert, "the Sixth Extinction," which explains the problem. Humans have been sending species to extinction for several thousand years. Mammoths and mastodons were driven extinct by humans during the hunter-gatherer cultural stage.
The problem is, and has always been, too much population growth.
In 1798, when Malthus explained that overpopulation led to disease and hunger, world was population was less than a billion. In 1972, when Meadows et al. published "Limits to Growth," world population was about 3.8 billion. Population has roughly doubled since then.
Other things equal, doubling population doubles the production of greenhouse gases. Some liberals argue that the poor don't use fossil fuels as much as Americans. This argument only makes sense if you imagine a future world in which the aspirations of the poor for better living standards are simply denied.
We did nothing in 1972, China did introduce a one-child policy in 1979, which is held up as repugnant by politicians in the US.
But it makes no sense to work to limit hydrocarbon emission without also controlling population growth.
As the planet inexorably warms, its carrying capacity will inevitably fall. Unless we control population growth ourselves, global warming will enforce a lower population by terrible means, leading perhaps to our extinction.
12
@Blaise Descartes You are SO right about this. Someone has likened our human species to a quickly-spreading bacterial growth. And so we are.
“From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left as well as the center have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency."
Anonymous attribution: "Heir of yesterday's fortune tellers"
1
It should be very clear that we have a serious problem that exceeds anything we have ever faced before. We walked into this problem because we thought fossil fuels were the answer to our industrial needs. Now we are confronting the cost, which could end our lives. Greta is right.
There are answers on the shelf and some almost there. On the shelf are renewables that need backup to serve 24/7. And there will be Generation IV nuclear reactors including Small and Micro Modular reactors that can be factory produced and shipped. These are the "heavy lifters" and the backup.
We only need to start moving away from fossil fuels as soon and as carefully as we can and first toward renewables, which we have.
Greta won't freeze. Sweden is nuclear.
1
Don’t shoot the Messenger! Let’s focus on China, India and other Mass polluters.The focus should be on Nuclear not Wind or Sun. We need to save our forests as deforestation has had severe effects on our climate.
2
It’s mostly the underclass affected by climate change and at the same time an opportunity for the 1% to gain more wealth/power. Until climate change affects the 1% directly, threatening their basic needs, it’s safe to say nothing substantial will be done.
8
Subsidies for fossil fuel have got to stop! We have been subsidizing fossil fuels for decades - in fact, that's why we got into the war in Iraq and why we are still in the middle east. How much more sane it would be to use our resources to build a renewable energy infrastructure in this country.
9
It sounds like a lot of people miss the point that 17 year old Greta Thunberg is really making.
She is speaking to the younger generations who are only starting to politically engage, (as well as those of the older generations who can still accept the message). They are starting to realize their parents have eaten all of the cookies and left only the dirty dishes for them.
Younger generations in the US will be paying the price for a coal and oil fired economy, underfunded Social Security and Medicare, failing infrastructure environmental degradation, financial piracy and Gilded Age inequality, even as they are left with the tab growing by $1 trillion a year to pay for the profligacy of their parents.
When they have a medical issue, they get a bill for thousands, even if they have expensive insurance, while their parents on Medicare are treated for free. And they get a Social Security statement every year that says their benefits will be slashed.
Of course we will migrate toward net zero carbon world and not achieve the dramatic immediate change that Greta calls for. And our grandchildren will face many climate related challenges.
But just maybe we will start thinking about and acting more with the future in mind. Sometimes I wonder if our Boomer generation gave up on the future after hiding under our desks in nuclear attack drills.
15
Everybody is ignoring that the dual notion that what humans do to the earth is OK and an economic model dependent upon growth just doesn't work with more and more humans. Even if technological advances allow for increasing the total human population the earth "can support", this doesn't mean that larger future generations should be allowed to crowd reason off the road.
7
Everybody commenting seems to be deflecting, denying, defending the status quo. She may be asking for an unrealistic solution, but I think the premise of her argument is correct.
Future generations will look at us in the same way we look at our ancestors who owned slaves, and wonder what were we thinking? How could we continue to inflict harm on the current and future generations after we became aware of what we were doing? History will judge us even more harshly than she does on our current response to the crisis.
447
The real question is: if the US continues to extract and burn fossil fuels, will there be history written? Who will survive the drownings, earthquakes, starvation (food is already diminished in quality), and lack of potable water? And if history can be written, how will it be disseminated and read? Etc.
23
@Bob Myers
I don’t think the analogy is very apt.
There were no slaveholders denouncing slavery.
Whereas there are many many climate activists and alarmists jetting all over the world – to Davos! – from conference to symposium to celebrity march, denouncing the very thing they’re doing.
Very likely future generations will look at THAT phenomenon with wonder and odium.
6
@Bob Myers Thunberg is not asking for an unrealistic solution, though the longer governments wait, the less likely they will achieve net zero emissions, let alone no emissions.
8
An important message regarding the threat of climate change if seemingly somewhat extremist, reactionary, and rude in its delivery.
Bad messenger, in that I agree with many of Ms. Thunberg's critics about her not seeming more than a public relations stunt -- a too harsh harbinger of a black-and-white future who undercuts her credibility with grandiose verbosity.
The media -- on both sides of the climate change debate -- is apparently too often unable to maintain journalistic neutrality -- along with Ms. Thunberg's strongest supporters and severest critics.
Does serious discussion about climate change have to be perceived by some as a show for extremism?
I am deeply concerned and troubled by what is being described as climate change and the failure to adequately address it.
I am just as deeply concerned by the exploitative use of a troubled, woman-child, school dropout who speaks in a harshly threatening manner to devout followers unconcerned about the complexities and difficulties involved in an economic, social, political and environmental issue that we can all agree must be addressed sooner rather than later.
5
There are reasons to be sad that those who attack the integrity of Ms. Greta Thunberg refuse to apologize. Here we have a younger person who is formulating arguments to help humans grapple with threats to the biosphere. Her sincerity is clear. She presents herself well. Her message is substantially correct. The structure of human civilization is extraodinarily complex. People will continue dig up parochial reasons why Greta's thoughts should be discounted. But for some of us who are members of the hoi polloi, we listen to her and try to modify our own behavior to be consistent with Greta's larger message.
30
The goal Ms. Thunberg speaks of are attainable with a fundamental shift to technology that already exists and can be grown exponentially. Let’s diverts the trillions from war to reindustrialization of our power sources, grids, and devices of consumption away from carbon.
39
@Mike What specifically are the existing technologies that can be grown to provide the power necessary to maintain industrial output, fly airliners millions of miles, steer cargo ships around the world, take billions of people to work and their other destinations? I don't believe these technologies can keep even a portion of today's population from dying of starvation, much less the billions more who will join us in the very near future. If these technologies exist, why aren't ambitious people investing in them, as they could then save civilization while enriching themselves? Maybe the Davos wolves are holding them hostage.
3
@Grunt
Hydrogen fuel cells
1
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and thousands of other scientists from around the world recommend keeping existing forests intact since older trees, forest substrate and forest soils are already storing more carbon than trees planted today. And yet there is little mention of the need for forest preservation in news reports about our deteriorating climate. Forests in other parts of the world are being cleared for cattle and by wildfires that are nothing short of apocalyptic, making forests here in North America a more crucial part of the worldwide climate equation.
12
@Some old lady The rate of deforestation in the US exceeds the rate of deforestation in Brazil.
2
We are facing an uphill battle for climate change legislation as long as our politicians continue to accept millions of dollars in donations from oil and gas money.
21
It was the youth in the U.S. who changed the trajectory of the Viet Nam War. It was Martin Luther King and his young followers who changed the trajectory of the Civil Rights movement and it will be Greta Thunberg and her young Activists who will change the trajectory of Climate change
We owe that to future Generations.
55
Thank you, Greta! We desperately need you and others to continue to fight. This is THE existential threat and we need political action now.
The only way politicians will act is if they see that they will lose power if they don't. We must show them that.
35
We need to look a lot further than the fossil fuel industry - specifically to the industries and activities that disproportionately rely on fossil fuels. We need to look at airlines, auto makers, the travel industry, etc.
Two good starts would be taxing jet fuel on international flights, which is currently not taxed, and stiff fees on private aviation.
29
China's overseas ventures include hundreds of electric power plants that burn coal, which is a significant emitter of the carbon scientifically linked to climate change.
Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China and its energy markets at Harvard University, tells NPR that China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.
- NPR
10
@Dr. John: China's wrongdoings do not excuse ours.
1
There is a plethora of evidence and hard data that affirm human-caused climate change, and that it is accelerating.
But Thunberg's message is wrong; The "house" is not "on fire". The better analogy is the house has a termite problem. There are slowly accruing, hidden effects, that over time will become more and more expensive to rectify and could ultimately make the house unstable, and possibly unlivable.
For me, this is more than a semantic quibble. The hyperbolic fear-mongering espoused by certain climate-activists such as Ms. Thunberg could actually hinder the necessary changes that are required to tackle the problem.
Pro-carbon interests, such as big oil and the auto industry, can point to the exaggerated claims as "evidence" that the problem is a hoax. Also, as people come to reject the wild, unsupported claims of the alarmists, they may very well dismiss the entire notion of human-caused climate change altogether.
There are thousands of scientists and engineers who are studying the problem and working on solutions. Looking to cult-ish celebrities Like Thunberg is not the answer.
10
@Celeste Speaking from India, the fire metaphor seems altogether more apt ... when my slipper cut on a tarred road last year, I, at 76, had to HOP home, as the road surface was scorching the bare foot . A Good Samaritan offered me his elbow. Also, the Australia fires speak volumes for those with eyes to see ...
14
The Australian “house” is certainly on fire is it not?
And as for “exaggerated claims”, if anything, the rate of change is exceeding predictions.
10
@Celeste The house is indeed on fire and you need to widen your reading. Many leading authorities on the subject have written about their alarm that change is accelerating faster than earlier models predicted. Moreover, you need to read about global species die-offs as well as the warming of the oceans. Wake up.
10
How brave of this young lady to lecture the starving billions on how to live their lives!
13
Someone should have helped her with her speech - it wasn’t very effective with this audience - a missed opportunity for now.
3
Has anyone shown Greta the past predictions and how wrong they have been? She is on the spectrum so the adults would do well to correct her on her false assertions.
9
Matthew, now we DO know predictions made in the 70's, 80's and 90's were, for the most part, incorrect. Almost all of them Underestimated the extent and advancement of climate change. Temperatures have risen faster than predicted as have total carbon emissions.
41
So you believe that someone who is on the spectrum cannot think clearly? That's quite offensive, because it is entirely incorrect. Greta Thunberg probably knows more about climate change than all but a handful of Americans, and is thinking clearly.
You seem to think that she is being alarmist, and overstating the coming disaster. I admire her for her restraint. This crisis is so severe that it is going to kill millions of people with direct effects, and disrupt the lives of hundreds of millions as their region's become unable to grow food, or become too hot to sustain human life. The mass of people will eventually begin to protest and riot and insist on change from their so-called leaders. By then it will be too late.
If the world starts listening to activists like in Ms. Thunberg, the cost will be much lower. Still obscenely high, but better than the effective destruction of most of human society.
12
@Matthew "On the spectrum" refers to autism, which affects social intelligence not cognitive. Someone would do well to correct you of your false assumptions.
9
The purest truth comes out of the mouths of children. This has been long recognized, and valued. Yet, here we are. When our children are telling us what our scientists have been trying to tell us for decades, will we continue to deny or minimize the already highly visible, devastating effects of Global Climate Change? Appears so. Let's wait until it is too late, until WE are the refugees.
27
@Michael I had children tell me to make a car with a bigger gas tank to just drive to the moon. Kids may be cute sometimes, but don't always have the mental capacity to see things in the big picture.
6
@Jay
I hope you used that as a teachable moment to provide information, at your child's developmental level, to help prepare him/her for the world he/she will be growing up in.
1
Where in all this is the call from Greta to “immediately” replace, say, the oil industries of countries like Nigeria and Angola with something else that will provide a reliable revenue stream for the governments of these impoverished countries? I’m under no delusion that the greater part of all this wealth isn’t being funneled off by corrupt officials, but not all of it is and to imply that these societies should simply transition “immediately” to something like building wind turbines or solar panels is patently ludicrous. Such a transition will take time and needs to be managed, and the economic interests of people living in these less wealthy countries of the world need to be taken into account or they’re simply not going to go along with any transition at all.
We’ve already seen with the Yellow Vest rebellion in France what happens when the economic interests of people living on the margins are simply ignored by climate change activists. How is this sort of thing helpful to the cause of combating climate change?
9
@M.A. You ask what will replace oil in Nigeria and Angola.
You need to have better countries to source an opinion from.
Nigeria strongly relies upon non-oil economic means to the tune of 92 percent. Granted that 86 percent of her export is oil, it should be a means to an end, such as the transition that the Saudi's are planning for their children's children for a non-oil based economy.
Angola is a horse of a different color. With billions of dollars in oil revenue bypassing their Central Bank, the reliable revenue stream you speak of, is completely unaccounted for.
11
While I honor and respect Greta Thunberg's international public adulation and admiration around the issue of climate change because she is legally still a minor I am appalled by what I consider has happened to her to be a form of child abuse.
I blame her parents, mass media, nations, businesses, adults and organizations with jurisdiction for this travesty in pursuit of a particular educational political socioeconomic agenda. Even one that I wholeheartedly agree with.
I felt and still feel the same way about Malala Yousafzai. Being a 'victim' of a shooting while a minor shouldn't have earned her a Nobel Peace Prize.
While Greta Thunberg's living with Asperger's syndrome on the autism spectrum should be a personal and private health medical matter between her and her parents.
12
@Blackmamba Their responses to their situations earned them international adulation and recognition. Why are we questioning their courage? Anne Frank was surely a victim, would you suggest she had stayed silent had she lived? Should Rosa Parks have been forgotten?
Let's focus on the climate and stop with all the side arguments already.
12
It sounds like what you want Ms. Thunberg to do is to shut up and sit down. Blaming her parents for letting her pursue nothing less than the salvation of the world is an odd take.
She doesn't need protecting and privacy for being on the spectrum, she is doing just fine. in fact, she refers to it as her superpower. She's having an extraordinary learning adventure as she grows into an adult, while she works to help mitigate the worst of the crisis that has already started to unfold.
We could use a few million more like her, and the young men and women who have survived high school shootings are among the best advocates to finally reign in the madness of America's gun culture.
9
@Blackmamba
All she is asking people to do is think. Politicians wont do anything to change the scenario. Trump and the fossil people are in bed have been for decades and around the world.
Thinking is good and she doesn't have abusive parents, she has a support group that care.
Maybe we should look at ourselves on why she stirs such negative emotions, Maybe we know we could do better.
Trump better worry about his own misfit children who take a stand only when it enriches there bottom line .
Trump is Impeached and Greta is on the cover of Time
7
Well, everyone is in love with Angela Merkel, too, and she is the one who switched off zero carbon nuclear power plants so she could burn more coal.
If Greta came out in favor of nuclear, and there is really no alternative to make up the shortfall renewables can’t fill, then perhaps that nonsense can be reversed.
Not holding my breath, though.
11
Ms. Thunberg is the only adult in the room speaking truth to power.
529
@mjbarr -- so true. And how many of the Davos "Masters of the Universe: flew to Davos in a private jet? They think their children will be sheltered from the chaos. Where is Max Robespierre when we need him?
15
@mjbarr
She's the kid who is pointing out the Emperor has no clothes.
17
@Mon Ray You are blaming the messenger. The vast majority of scientists have agreed with her and have for years! She may be bringing a dramatic flair to the issue, and if so, more power to her as all the vaunted scientists have not been able to do so. When we have a President who mocks her message, we are in trouble and need a clarion in our skies!
10
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" Nicholas Klein
32
Ten years ago Greta was seven, a desperate world flaps in the wind.
5
I feel like we are living in the novel "Exit West" and we still refuse to take action on the havoc we are creating in our world.
16
Population control would be a good start to slow climate change. China showed one way to control population. Planting trees lots of them spaced away from each other would be another way and Nobel laureate Wangari Mathai has showed that in Kenya and even before that a mayor of Mumbai (Bombay), Sudhir Joshi in a densely populated city in the 2nd most populated country in the world, India has shown that with his slogan of clean Bombay, Green Bombay. The push for moving away from CO2 and CO emitting vehicles is getting increasingly a reality. Electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, hydrogen and natural gas powered vehicles are increasing in numbers but still quite costly for many.
Some sensible people drive small cars or bicycles or walk. Climate change has been occurring since the coal fired steam engines started pulling goods and passengers across the world. Most places electric engines have replaced them.
The consciousness of the world to climate change has increased dramatically since the turn of this century. Clever ways have to be adopted to reduce carbon emissions and pollution and each one of us has to take responsibility to do our part. Accords and Davos will contribute little if everyone keeps pointing fingers at everyone else. Environment protection agencies all around the world should be allowed to strictly enforce their regulations to keep the air, water and land clean. Yesterday the gas price at the Cosco gas station was 2.19/gallon, choose fuel efficient vehicles.
11
@Girish Kotwal: as a yardstick, consider this: at Christmas of 1961, five of us left our upstate New York college campus in a Corvair, headed west and dropping off folks at their homes along the way. We left the Ohio Turnpike looking for gas cheaper than 39¢ a gallon. What did you last spend for gas?
The only meaningful way to combat human climate impact is to control population growth. This involves not only robust family planning policies, but also limits on immigration, something that the left and its identity politics abhors. (You cannot allow countries that refuse to implement population growth policies to simply export their problems to countries that do). Democrats, liberals, and Greta, focus solely on telling Republicans that corporations must solve this problem. Let me hear what the left is willing to give up.
16
@Jack: Greta Thunberg clearly states that the problem of climate change transcends politics and that all political sides are responsible for not resolving it. You are the one politicizing the problems. That being said, the climate change deniers in the USA are Republicans, including Trump, and the ones using immigration as a wedge issue but not doing anything about it because they need cheap and compliant workers, are Republicans, including Trump.
27
@Jack: There is no connection between "the left" and population growth. You are the descendant of immigrants, just as I am, and in this hemisphere, just as all humans are. No humans originated here; we all came out of Africa, albeit at various epochs of emigration. It is the right-wingers who object to birth control and family planning. It is superstition that undermines reason in the quest for stability.
1
Yeats was right. We are slouching our way to Bethlehem. To call it Climate Change is to portray a somewhat benign annoyance and there is no reckoning.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
A billion animals in Australia burning, more like murdered, because there is nothing compelling going on. What more do you need. The tipping point has tipped. Years from now, humanity can wring its hands and Weep We Didn't Know We Didn't Know.
We knew. We know. We choose to do nothing. It is too late now. Historians need to be writing that legacy. So our imperiled cultures can look back and say: it was them. They did it. We live like this because they didn't care to transcend their leadership. They knew.
We know the politicians. We know the corporate reprobate. We know the deniers pernicious obscenities. We know the stinking world for what it will become.
Has became. Humans don't perceive themselves to be animals. We are them.
Greta has a message no one wants to hear.
"The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
62
@Tim Barrus
Except that today the best of us are full of passionate intensity.... anxious to stop climate change and environmental calamity, and the worst of us are full of passionate intensity, anxious not to let go of anything, and the ones on the middle path are not yet awake to the need for action or are paralyzed by circumstance. And some of the best of us have given up worrying about it.
7
Thunberg demanded divestiture in all fossil fuel companies this year.
She does not appear to understand the difference between a genuine political movement and a religious fad such as the Children's Crusade.
11
Ms. Thunberg is sounding the alarm bell.
You can listen to the alarm and help take corrective action by demanding better public policy from our leaders and ourselves ...or you can go bury your head in the sand and smirk at her.
44
Be patient. In one hundred years there won’t be any children.
11
She needs to be more constructive. Telling people that their children’s future is gravely imperiled if they don’t immediately quit their jobs and do something else - something that’s not actually available right now - isn’t helpful if quitting their jobs imperils their family’s existence right at this moment.
Confronted with the option of losing everything, even their lives, right now versus a couple of decades from now, most people will understandably choose the latter.
2
Getting tired of all the drama with G. Is the Earth warming. Apparently so. Does anyone care? Apparently not. Spend a month in NYC, a petri dish that proves my point. They have let development run unfettered (gotta keep those donor coffers flowing) , environmental rules are ignored (union rules and construction so important), 120 year old water pipes break weekly ( if you can't see it why fix it, no red ribbon to cut), subway lines (a sustainable way to get around) are a hot mess (politicians and their brethren take gas guzzling SUVs), bridges are being held together just enough to not require new ones (state of good repair anyone). If anything on this order would be able to succeed it would require a catastrophic event to force people. At this point it is just a talking point. A nice thing to add to a road show presentation for a company and their investors to gaggle over. Otherwise it's just noise.
26
@MD
You are so right. It is a city that is crumpling around us and we do nothing . A mayor who ran to be president and homeless mentally ill being treated like animals on the streets. The rich destroyed the communities and no one cares
Climate change is white noise but you know for our children we need to start to educate them while they are young so that they get jobs of responsibility and do something to help the country.
I remember when Earth Day started my mom and the community wanted to help in any way they could. Sounds so foolish now but we were trying and eager to do so. We absolutely cared and educated ourselves when getting smart about earth science wasn't easy.
I guess I just want her to keep talking otherwise, our kids wont know anything but the corporate slogans that everything is ok. Hurricane sandy will have many sisters and brothers on the horizon and we are not prepared.
Greta being there will let Trump know how she is a winner and he is being Impeached.
4
High School Dropouts should not normally be dictating policy to Government Leaders but this one seems Born to do It, in the words of Beto O'Rouke. A parrot could do it as well, so could a Bot. Cover her if you want, she will continue to age and will quickly lose the appeal. What happens to her after will be the responsibility of the media that created her. It will not be a happy ending for Ms. Thunberg.
12
@GregP : It's worth making a distinction between a "high school dropout" and someone who is, effectively, homeschooling.
The kind of education Greta is getting right now is not only much greater than what she would've received sitting in a classroom, it's also more tailored to the needs she has.
As someone with Asperger's, her greatest needs are to build social skills, social connections, and real-life skills. And her current experience is helping her hone all three.
She's also mastering a foreign language, getting far more experience in speaking English than she would've at home, and writing and presentation skills.
Her travels are getting her well-versed in geography and other cultures.
17
@GregP: Well, fortunately you cannot dictate what anyone is allowed to say and what media can and cannot cover.
8
@GregP
So Trump went to the elite schools and he cant put a sentence together, Trump doesnt even know what Pearl Harbor was all about. Trump isn't even on the level of a parrot my dear friend he is on the level of a Russian enabler.
So I would take this drop out over an elite educated IMPEACHED president any day of the week. What is he going to say to embarrass the country today and tomorrow.
It will be a happy ending for Greta, we will begin to ensure that our children are not going to die in a massive fire in Australia or die in a flood in NYC as people did with Hurricane Sandy
10
Such an articulate and impassioned cry from a member of the generation who will be left holding the bag of climate crisis.
Nobody with the power to do anything will be alive when their inaction translates into an inhabitable planet.
This isn't a simple abdiction of reponsiblity. It's wholesale abandonment of the powerless, the children who today see imending doom but lack the authority to stop it.
112
Greta is my hero
45
"Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction."
"Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies."
"And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels."
Okay, sounds good to me. However, are YOU willing to accept (and suffer!) the consequences? I am. I have been sounding the alarm for over 50 years now. I gave up any hope of a career. I just worked. I gave up having children. I gave up driving a car for many of my adult years. I have been growing food and giving it away for 16 years now. I left the USA and moved to a less energy wasteful country. I have changed all my behaviors because of the environmental crisis that started over a hundred years ago.
Now those of you who want to stop using fossil fuels are going to have to bear the responsibility of 80-90% of the world's population dying in a short period of time. Are you ready for this awesome responsibility? Maybe some of you will be part of dieoff. Are you willing to accept your own death in the grim, not-so-distant future. I am.
I am all for the young people making things better. Believe me, I have been on your side even before you were born. I took on responsibility for the Vietnam War, US political corruption and the environmental crisis back in 1968. Are all you young folks willing to do the same?
20
If every smiling mayor and Democrat would set verifiable decarbonization goals and a plan to achieve an incremental reduction by the end of 2020, we would be on the way to implementing our rescue.
Everybody is saying 80% reduction by 2050, but not specifying the CO2 tons we need to remove-this year. If Trump or Israel sets fire to Iran, the CO2 budget is blown.
9
All of you who expect Greta to spew technical rhetoric don't understand that her style is...well, how should I put it..."Trumpish" and like Trump, she succeeds amazingly well at energizing HER base of young people whose eyes often glaze over when scientific experts speak. She is trying to energize her base, not teach a class!
6
@rm : Actually, what she says is "Listen to the scientists." She reads the documents herself (like the latest IPCC report), highlights a few key nuggets, and then acknowledges that she isn't a scientist and that those are the people she needs to listen to.
She listens to the scientists. And she uses the power she's developing to encourage others to accept their limitations and do the same.
16
This message is being delivered to corporate "ears". They do not hear you. Profit rules over the individual and collective needs of Society. It is a Frankenstein monster that was not built to care.
306
@Timit Exxon isn't the problem. Voters are. They will NOT respond to climate change the way progressives want them to. It will NEVER happen. The lofty goals activists are demanding aren't unachievable in a democratic society. Not in a country like ours where voters don't have any appetite for more economic sacrifice. Millions of people are two paychecks away from being in dire economic straits. They won't tolerate higher gas taxes. I've heard people say that if it's too expensive to commute people will have to live closer to their work. But people are moving further away from economic centers because the cost of housing in urban areas is unaffordable. The left by proposing a high carbon tax are trying to make their way to work unaffordable as well. Low wage earners spend a lot to fill their cars & trucks up. For most mass transit isn't an option. Thoughtless politicians that want a carbon tax rarely think of the poor & the hardship it will cause them. I find it interesting that the Democratic left is calling for the exact kind of tax that the French are up in arms against. What's happening in France has made many reconsider this questionable notion. No one accepts the way progressives are framing the issue which is why they aren't getting any political traction in Congress. The left is basically saying fight climate change OUR way or all life on Earth will perish. No one is buying it. NO ONE. This will be a very slow process that will require a lot of adaptation on our part.
36
@T. Rivers Once you drill down you'll find the issue is infinitely more complicated than GOP resistance. Last month the NYT reported that Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, set the price of its IPO at a level that would raise $25.6 billion, a sum that is expected to make it the world’s biggest I.P.O. Does anyone think for a billionth of a second that the Saudi's, the Nigerians or anyone else in OPEC is going to stop drilling for oil? It's NEVER going to happen in our lifetime. NEVER. Every ounce ...& I mean every ounce is coming out of the ground into our cars & factories. Oil is the source of Saudi Arabia's power. The kingdom relies on oil revenue to pay for its massive domestic & military spending. Just to break even, the Saudis needs a pump as much oil as possible. Huge production cuts would force Saudis to drain their shrinking pile of cash, borrow money or scale back dividends paid by Aramco. According to CNN oil output from non-OPEC countries is expected to surge too, by a record 2.3 million barrels per day in 2020. That would easily top the previous record of 1.96 million sets in 1978. The US shale oil revolution is a big contributor to the coming gush of oil. US production is expected to climb by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2020. Norway & Brazil are also expected to add 1 million barrels per day next year. In the next ten years, we will be drowning in an ocean of oil. That's our reality. There's absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. Nothing.
12
In 2009 the US government owned General Motors, with its proven advanced electric vehicles and plants ready to produce them. We should have rolled with it, but instead corporate GM, now, wants to make trucks. The corporate instinct holds us back as a Society. Citizens need to be lead, we are so used to being corporate drones. Warren's winning message was so strong, but seems diluted. Nationalism requires control over the corporate instinct.
14
Honestly .....Greta just doesn’t exude the type of advocacy needed at this time.
She is equal in cult status to Trump and just as weird . Irrespective of her Asbergers Diagnosis. Her presentation is poor. And she and her followers use her diagnosis as an excuse for her rude delivery. She is in that “ cult of personality “ category for youthful followers and uninformed climate change hysterics. Solutions to our problems have been available for 50 years. Humans just won’t stop the behaviors that are causing exacerbation of physical planet destruction through pollution , fire , floods , and natural events like volcanos which heat up planets. Developers have money and power like trump and will continue to degrade our environment for wealth initiatives. The don’t care about non wealthy humans in our global communities. We are spinning our wheels with the likes of Greta and trump at the helm of environmental justice and equity for people on our dying planet. Not effective in solutions. Just more yada yada for MSM to tout around for the bread and circus clowns. Can u tell I am very angry in the direction of humanity. Solutions never occur. For anything anymore. And it only took about 50 years of useless wars and pollution .
22
@nurseJacki
I agree with some of your points but you sure misinterpret Greta. She is charismatic and focused on publicizing a problem that leaders in government and industry chose to ignore as inconvenient to profit making. It will take a groundswell of the public to bring about change and this young women is effectively promoting the cause. No, she is not "weird". She is Swedish, and young, and laser focused on the greatest threat to humanity since nuclear weapons.
4
It seems that the excuse to do nothing is the loss of jobs that the changes that are necessary will cause. I actually think such a massive change would necessitate more people working. Large corporate farms that only benefit a few will need to be changed to many smaller farms that benefit many. Reforestation calls for much work and many hands on deck. Burning and destroying the forest does not produce jobs or community wealth. Saving this world will not be done through idleness.
105
@Daniel Skillings When did the future become one of never-ending toil? The simple fact I see is that an awful lot of what passes for work we would be better off without.
3
Even if we did everything Greta asked in the near term, we are still doomed. There are too many humans and human population will continue to grow to the point where the planet can’t sustain it.
42
@Bruce Clearly we are already at the point of human population which the planet can not sustain. We need a two-prong approach to global warming and environmental destruction: population control leaving to a decrease in human population as well as limits to greenhouse gases. Unfortunately our leaders and the people are not up to the challenge.
29
War on a scale never seen before will fix the problem.
The planet will survive the mass extinction.
Humans won’t.
13
@Captain Nemo
The Beetles and Ants must be laughing by the Billions. You certainly have the right scientific mind. Extinction of humans would benefit the planet immensely. Less species would be harmed if we weren't around, the bacteria, insects, fish, and lower species would flourish. Hip-Hop, Basketball, and Movies would perish. What a loss for the Universe!!! Not!
4
Greta Thunberg is amazing! The world's business and political leaders are worse than failures.
World leaders are putting economic prosperity above human survival. They are, at the same time, indifferently looking on and also actively participating in a the destruction of the earth's habitability.
Greta emphasizes the harm they are doing to our children. What will it profit our children that we choose to avoid or minimize the financial impact on the fossil fuel industries and leave them confronting an hostile environment and earth that is dying?
78
Greta is not an extremist, although her demands will be portrayed as extreme. Unfortunately for all of us, she’s a realist. It’s past time to pay lip service to the problem of climate change and global warming, because, as Greta so often says, our house is indeed on fire.
605
Many people whose jobs she’s suggesting should be terminated “right now” are simply not going to be in a position to get a new one right away doing something else. She’s not suggesting any sort of managed transition for these people. “It’s going to be hard.” Yes, for them, not for her. In places like the Third World, losing a job can be catastrophic, even deadly.
18
Then we should subsidize the people who will lose jobs because of this.
Listen to yourself: “If people aren’t paid to destroy the earth’s future, how will they live?”
Pay them to stop.
108
Perhaps, you'd prefer an 'unmanaged' transition instead, M.A., with massive fires, massive droughts, massive hurricanes, massive typhoons, massive hurricanes, massive flooding, and massive mass migrations caused by fossil-fuel-based CO2 global warming ?
It's going to be 'hard' for everyone, but the status quo is already quite deadly and catastrophic.
Stop making lame excuses to do nothing.
236
What a wise soul Greta Thunberg is.
Unfortunately, her audience is love with money, greed, and fossil-fuel addicts.
As Greta said, counseling is available.
"We demand that ... all companies, banks, institutions and governments:
Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.
And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now."
And invest and subsidize in solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro, biomass and other alternative energy technologies.
The alternative is a planetary Easy Bake Oven ecocide thanks to Gas Oil Petroleum.
Don't let your children grow up to be GOP fossil fuel junkies.
239
But will her acolytes take action? Doubtful.
6
Will she not be speaking? She was planning to make remarks or she is planning to make remarks?
3
I don’t understand the obsession and attention this girl generates.
We have thousands of actual climate scientists convening in the last two months at AGU and AMS, but instead we would rather hear science interpretation from a 17 year old activist who “knows her stuff” and “read the entire report.”
46
@mike Ever hear the story about the emperor's new clothes? A child is saying that we are all being fooled again. That's why everyone is listening.
62
Because it is their FUTURE
23
I have been delivering the same message for years.
Nobody listens to me, though.
As far as I’m concerned, she has put her finger on the money, she has managed to achieve superstar status and people listen to her.
As long as what she says makes rational sense, and it does so far, I am behind her. She has the necessary communication skills the rest of us are lacking. It’s the goal that counts, and achieving it, not who gets to collect the laurels.
If there are laurels to be had, Trump will claim them for himself anyway, that much is certain.
38
this is a scary speech. why doesn't Trump do anything to help the environment?
3
@luigi-Because Trump is bought and paid for by fossil fuel magnates and refuses to believe there is any sort of environmental issue going on. He’s ended nearly every environmental action the US had taken in the last few decades. His presidency is a nightmare that our country may never recover from.
46
Dealing with climate change will cause disruption in people’s lives. Not dealing with climate change will cause massive disruption but it appears to be further away. Many people I know say vote your pocketbook. Stock market is up life is good. People don’t look 10 years down the road they look at most a few months. Goldman Sachs had a conference and they say Trump will be re elected. The rich and powerful think dollars not lives. And even the democratic candidates are pushing climate change in the background. During the last debate climate change questions were one of the last questions. It’s not really taken seriously.
8
Greta is inspirational and I for one would like to see her and her peers running things for a while. I’m a member of the failure generation so I don’t think I’ve any right to argue that wisdom comes with experience. She is correct in all that she says and because she’s not making promises for personal gain she has no filter other than honesty.
When I say I’m part of the failure generation I mean that I’ve allowed the liars and dissemblers to carry on regardless, even though I knew they were lying to me. I comforted myself by saying that there were equally important issues to address. There was nothing more important and I was wrong. I was well meaning but that’s no excuse when I think of the world I’m leaving for my grandchildren.
The first climate change warning report landed on the desk of Richard Nixon. Not one person currently working in any area of responsibility at any age can claim ignorance.
Denial is tantamount to treason and betrayal against the entirety of humanity. And all for a mess of pottage.
141
B R A V O! I am an admirer and supporter of the children of our future world. Keep it up. You have a fan.
29
I support the goals she’s advocating, but having spent time working among the poor in the third world, effectively terminating on a moment’s notice the jobs that many people on the margins depend on for their livelihoods is simply going to fuel a backlash against any kind of approach to climate change. She’s honestly starting to look to me like someone who’s out of touch with the reality of how millions of people around the planet actually live. We need a 17-year-old activist who grew up in a slum in Angola.
37
@M.A. Exactly. All of Asia, which makes up the majority of the world’s population would be out of work and soon starve to death. I live in Thailand and such rapid changes would be devastating to the Thai economy. You can’t just rapidly change the way things or done. The changes need to be gradual so that societies can adapt accordingly.
12
@Betsy When would you suggest that this gradual change begin?
26
@Betsy - So it's better for agricultural and economic devastation that will come with increased storms, floods, fires, instead of economic hardship by doing more to slow down or prevent climate devastation NOW?
8
So, we have a 17 year old speaking for us that believe we must address #GlobalWarming in a meaningful way, and now.
And now means now. Don’t tell us you will do something in or by 2050. By now we mean this week or next. What coal plants are shutting down? What Carbon tax are you adding? What quotas on fossil fuel mining are you adding?
85
@Cal Page All these people want action now, and they want others to bear the burden or pay the money.
How many people are willing to go back to the time that you read when it is daylight - you only visit those you can walk to - only eat or manufacture was is grown or developed nearby? How many of these 17 year olds are willing to even give up their cell phones, media, or rare earth batteries?
2
@Cal Page
Not shutting down ANY Coal Plants. Not adding Any Carbon Tax. No quotas at all on fossil fuel extraction. Free market will solve the problem or it isn't solvable. Say hello to the yellow vests for me if you run into any of them and ask them how They like the carbon taxes.
@Paul
I would rather go back to olden times if the alternative is an ecosystem inhospitable to human and all other species around us.
3
The concept of "rewilding nature" is profound, especially for areas in and around New York City which are constantly being altered due to development.
11