Social media has a role that can make things go viral, but a girl with a sign in Sweden can’t make her image go viral unless she has a big machinery behind her. There had been climate marches, like the one in DC in 2017 in which people have all sorts of signs that are then posted on social media and they never created such a stir. Scientists who know about the reality of climate change can post their comments on social media and not even get a retweet or a like, in fact, they don’t even have many followers. The message behind Greta is one that the corporate world has embraced, precisely because it allows then to give a solution that appears green, when in fact is just a chance to green their image.

I went to that march in 2017 with 350.org, but after that, I learned that this organization and its director, Bill McKibben have connections with Exxon-Mobil and the Rockefeller family. 350.org had a campaign about telling Exxon Mobile that they knew about climate change and therefore should be held responsible. Of course they knew,and weirdely enough they also gave money for the 350.org campaign against fossil fuels. Exxon knows that fossil fuels are still essential to our way of life, but it is also in their interest to diversify their investments to things that appear green. Many corporations are doing the same, for example, the French oil company Total is greening its image by opening a bio diesel refinery. What they don’t tell you is how the palm oil and soy used for bio diesel is destroying mature forests and bio diverse ecosystems around the world, displacing people, polluting the water and producing emissions. The world is much more complicated than it appears.

I know that the emissions of planes are quite big, and I think it is good to point it out to people, as Great did.

I am not anti-corporation per se, I am against the lack of accountability that corporations have in our present system and how the super-wealthy can buy politicians and the media to help their interests. I am not for revolution because I think that we have passed the time for revolutions, we are living in conditions that humans had not experienced since the onset of civilization and consequent high population growth. The climate and environmental damage that we have inflicted on the Earth’s capacity to sustain us is going to cause havoc all over the world, droughts and fires, changes in agriculture and ocean output, water shortages, will all make the continuation of our current system quite difficult. More and more people will lack resources and will fight for them. We live on a finite planet and our relentless technological and industrial progress has made us think that it will continue forever, but a finite planet can’t have infinite resources.