Greta Thunberg has been criticised for not addressing the facts and being too emotional in her speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit. However the climate activist is pleading for action from world leaders and not trying to address the fact of climate change which has been widely known for many years.
The following is a letter to the editor of Brisbane’s Courier Mail (30 Sept 2019) in response to Greta Thunberg’s speech. The Courier Mail editor saw fit to excise the text marked (in blue). The following was one of two letters included by the editor that questioned negative portrayals of Greta Thunberg as the enfant terrible of climate action. – Editor, WBT, 1 Oct 2019.
__oOo__
Much criticism has been levelled at Greta Thunberg following her address to the United Nations. She has been cast as puppet of climate activists.
Scientists addressing climate change have abandoned attempts to persuade people and governments about the science knowing that their efforts at truth to power are being ignored. No-0ne seriously doubts that human activity is contributing to climate change which will adversely impact life on earth. What her critics believe (probably wrongly) is that wealth and power will permit them to avoid those adverse impacts, They care nothing for the suffering of others.
Is it any wonder that Thunberg does not attempt to address the facts of climate change, but resorts to oratory and rhetorical devices, even some hyperbole and invective to make her point.
Lincoln’s “Four score and seven years ago….”, Churchill’s “ We will fight them on the beaches…”. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream …” speeches are revered as powerful calls to their respective societies to address the serious challenges before them.
Are the same oratorical devices to be denied to a member of the generation which will bear the burden of climate change ?
John Curr
1 Oct 2019
References
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/30/greta-thunberg-enemies-inaction-climate-crisis.
The most moronic aspect of climate change denialism is that eco-conscious changes are actually cost-effective. Take for renewable electricity generation, particularly home generated & stored, which reduces the cost to around a quarter of what power barons charge. Then there are electric vehicles which when fuelled from home PV systems cost almost nothing to run. That said, I refuse to be part of the cycling fraternity, especially the uber-arrogant lycra set who clearly believe that the sun, moon and stars rotate around them. The nearest we see to MAMILs in the establishment are members of the judiciary, be-wigged penguins who are apparently of the belief that they are considerably higher life-forms to the rest of us. In reality these clowns have their heads so far up their fundamental orifices that they wouldn’t recognize daylight if it fell on them. By buying into the ‘big business is backing Greta lie’, people are conned into maintaining the status quo which clearly favours the big end of town. Personally I don’t see the problem with a 16 year old girl shaming the Donald and SCUMMO since adults in general lack the nous to do so. Activists should be taking a leaf out of Greta’s book as she has managed to gee-up vastly more people than any adult-instigated campaign in recent history. Imagine how much pressure we could exert over the lunatics of all political affiliations ensconsed in Canberra is all of the advocacy groups we represent were able to get 300,000 sheeple off their backsides. My guesstimate suggests that even one percent of the voters, if sufficiently motivated, would force the bottom-feeding bloodsucking parasitic scum who supposedly work for us, to sit up and take notice of whatever issues. That is in the order of one and a half million … an unthinkable number to any dissident group but well within the capacity of a handful of what I’ll describe as ‘Greta groups’.