Thanks for your comments. I don’t doubt the good intentions of Great and the millions of young people that are taking their time to protest. I also think that it is good they are managing to finally express the urgency of our climate and environmental woes.
As far as corporations, the evidence from several investigative reporters like Cory Morningstar and others, the Greta phenomenon was well planned and it required corporate money. A single teenager sitting in front of the Swedish parliament with a sign could have stayed there forever without anybody noticing. It so happened that the right powerful people with connections passed by and quickly started using her as their spokesperson.
Corporations want profits above all and this is proved by the type of environmental schemes that they propose which mostly involve the acquisition of water resources and land all over the planet. These schemes end up displacing indigenous people, destroying mature forests and bio diverse ecosystems that are then replaced with mono culture tree plantations for paper and furniture or with palm oil and soy for bio-fuels. These practices increase greenhouse emissions, destroy the mature forest’s capacity for capturing CO2 and pollute the water and soil of millions of people around the world. Corporations know all this, but they also know that they can get their cake and eat it too. They can reallocate investments to what appears ‘green’, continue their profits and appear to be doing something for the planet. These are the people that are behind Greta, the same people that go to Davos to talk about the future, mostly of profits, but the photo ops with Greta are great for their image.
Once the corporations were on board, Greta’s every move was publicized and the media was allowed to admit that climate change should be a priority and the numbers of young people protesting increased dramatically. The media made a big deal about Greta’s trip across the Atlantic, extolling her refusal to take a plane. If you look, the trip was a big media op, but had nothing green about it. Greta crossed on an Imoca 60 class yacht owned by Pierre Casiraghi, the grandson of Grace of Monaco. The yacht is made of carbon fiber and other high tech materials, all made from petroleum and natural gas propane. The making of such an extravagant yacht has a carbon footprint that overly exceeds the one of Greta’s seat on a commercial airline. The yacht is one of many that the Casiraghi family owns, along with countless racing cars, racing boats and private jets. The photo op was perfect, but it was just that.
These photo ops misguide people into thinking that small isolated solutions are enough; just limiting a bit our flying, our meat consumption and recycling are enough to solve the problem, according to Greta’s message. When you understand the science of the reality of what we have done to the planet, with all the feedback mechanisms on the Earth’s systems, you see that these isolated solutions have nothing to do with science but with dogma. Each person chooses what they will do for the planet and feel happy and hopeful about the future by doing it. It is no different than praying to a saint, since we are just choosing the part of the dogma that suits us.
The solutions that Greta, her supporters and some politicians and media people pro Green New Deal embrace, conveniently dismiss the direness of the situation we are in and the impossibility to replace energy-dense fossil fuels with renewable energy. Renewable energy isn’t clean or renewable. The infrastructure and raw materials required produce incredible pollution and emissions. Modern renewable energy currently provides only about 5% of the energy we consume, which is not the same as the electricity we consume. Electricity is only 18% of the energy we require. People talk about providing electricity to cities, but we forget that our gargantuan consumption of energy requires much more power.
These solutions are simplistic because they are illusions, they aren’t feasible. People can choose to believe in them, but if you want the truth, then you have to accept that the situation is more difficult than the majority of people imagine. We have affected the capacity of the planet to provide a beneficial environment for our survival and we don’t want to accept it. We don’t know how all is going to evolve, but I know that it is going to be a very tough ride for humanity quite soon.
