By Matt Rooney
_
Leftist social media circles are swooning over Greta Thunberg today.
Who? Apparently, she’s a teenage Swedish environmental activist-in-training who made a splash at the U.N. on Monday with a hyper-emotional speech chastising world leaders for inaction on climate change.
–
“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean,” the seething 16-year-old declared at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. “Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction, and you can only talk about money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”
It was quite the performance. Give the kid an Oscar:
David Hogg 2 pic.twitter.com/mXVBnKTj4X
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 23, 2019
Or was it? A performance?
I agree with Greta on one point: the adult world has failed her and her peers, just not in the way she thinks.
Greta may be a bit shocking to normal, well-adjusted humans over the age of 40 but she’s also likely not an aberration. There’s mounting evidence that children in Western nations are being brought to the brink of an ulcer by a campaign of climate change hysterics. And by ‘hysterics,’ I don’t mean acceptance that the climate is indeed changing and human should strive to be responsible stewards of the planet.
These kids have been brainwashed by the culture and their schools to believe the earth is spinning on borrowed time! That without radical, dramatic and immediate change, the earth won’t be able to sustain life much longer (we’re talking years, not decades or centuries). They’ve also been taught that young people have some species of inherent wisdom and moral authority to which people who’ve been around longer, learned more, experienced more and done more MUST yield. Immediately. Unquestioningly. Unconditionally.
What a way to grow up. It’s terribly sad. Also dangerous, but back to that in a minute.
I hate whenever either side, right or left, uses kids to make political points. If you need to hide behind children? You’re more than likely standing on shaky intellectual ground.
Had Greta been given a balanced education on this subject, she might feel a little less desperate:
Global extreme weather-related deaths are actually down 99.9% since the Roaring ’20s- Deaths due to floods and droughts are both down dramatically from 100 years ago
- On the hurricane front? Not only are they NOT becoming more frequent, but “”global weather damage as a percent of global GDP actually fell from 1990 to 2017.
The list goes on, and on, and on.
Scientists and politicians have been predicting the planet’s imminent demise for 50 years and, without fail, every arbitrary deadline and wild predictions has been debunked.
You get the point. The climate is NOT a serial killer in 2019. The facts simply don’t support prognostications of a pending environmental apocalypse. What’s more, Greta’s not-so-thinly-veiled swipe at capitalism is unfortunate given its role in making the globe not just wealthier but also safer and healthier.
I’m genuinely sorry the adults in Greta’s life did such a miserable job giving her the perspective she deserves AND NEEDS to evolve. I feel sorry for her. I feel terrible for all the members of this ignorant, arrogant, angry generation. I’m at a loss as to how these kids are going to solve complex or difficult problems in 20 years when they begin to take the reins. Kids reared to believe #wokeness trumps accuracy, and FEELING something is a better barometer for truth than being able to prove it, aren’t just doomed to fail; they’re also willing, vulnerable pawns-in-waiting for the next generation of tyrants.
I don’t know everything. No one knows everything. The proximate problem: these kids lack humility and capacity to reason.
But don’t be mistaken: my pity doesn’t translate to sitting back and allowing a 16-year old, with no facts in her corner, lecture me about the fate of the planet and pretend her emoting somehow positive, powerful, constructive or worth celebrating. It’s not. The world is in big trouble if this is its future. We cannot and should not stand for it because yes, as always, ignorance will destroy mankind and the little blue orb we call home long before plastic straws and bags.
–
