[✔️] January 2, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Jan 2 09:10:45 EST 2022
/*January 2, 2022*/
/[ Clips from renowned disaster-journalist ] /
*The Return of the Urban Firestorm What happened in Colorado was
something much scarier than a wildfire.*
By David Wallace-Wells
- -
*If you really want to stop a fire, you have to sort of address the
underlying conditions, rather than chasing the flames once they start.*
There’s some language I’ve seen other folks using that I actually really
thought was good and appropriate in this context, which is that events
like this are climate enabled and weather driven. The climate change
signal is very strong, but it’s mainly in the preconditions. And if you
try and do a climate attribution study on Thursday’s weather, I don’t
think you’re really going to find anything, but that would be also
missing the point, because that’s not really where the climate signal
would be coming from anyways.
People really like to simplify fire — wildfire in particular. They make
sweeping claims about why it happened, what the risk factors were, what
the context was. And I think that’s really problematic because there
really is a lot of complexity baked into these things, as you well know....
- -
*What about the winds? You hear people talking about climate
intensifying wind patterns but there doesn’t seem to be much research
yet to back that up.*
There isn’t a lot of evidence of it yet. But there also hasn’t been a
lot of study of it yet. So it’s more of an absence of evidence versus
evidence of absence situation.
But even if we assume for a moment that the winds themselves don’t
change at all with climate change, these antecedent conditions changing
really matters a lot. Even if the winds don’t change, but the fire
season and the magnitude of the vegetation dryness increases, that
matters a lot because of the sequencing.
That’s something I think that’s becoming increasingly clear in a bunch
of different climate extremist perspective: it’s not just the
incremental increases of this or that aspect. It’s that the natural
events that we’re used to experiencing are somewhat dependent on some
particular sequence of events. You know, the spring arrives and things
warm up, it gets wetter and when the summer arrives, it gets hotter. The
winter arrives, the snow comes, it gets colder. But baked into those
seasonal transitions are specific types of weather that don’t actually
occur all year round. So in California, for example, you get these
strong offshore down slope winds, mainly in autumn or early winter. You
don’t get them in summer, the hottest time of year. That’s why autumn is
peak fire season in California. It’s not because it’s the hottest
season, it’s because the winds are most prevalent. And if you extend
fire season by drying things out and warming things up later into the
autumn, then you get the same season winds…
- -
*It’s not about finding an escape from risk but choosing what kind of
risk you’re comfortable with.*
And that’s sort of how I try to answer the question. What worries you
the most? I mean, if you have the luxury and the flexibility to actually
choose where you’re going to live on this basis anyway, then that
already presupposes certain things about what your status in global
society is. That in itself helps you make that decision in certain ways.
But some people are really freaked out by earthquakes because you just
don’t know they’re coming. If you’re lucky and you have the smartphone
app, maybe you’ll get 10 seconds of warning. But if you’re in L.A. for
the big one, you’re not gonna have an earthquake watch when you get a
couple days to prepare, it’s just pretty much just gonna happen. You’re
gonna have to deal with the consequences.
You’re never gonna be in a place where there’s a hurricane that sneaks
up on you and suddenly hits land. Fortunately, those sorts of things
don’t happen.
*You can see the storm coming.*
Maybe if you don’t have the resources to do anything about it or leave,
it doesn’t matter that you have great warning, but if you have those
resources a hurricane is never gonna take you by surprise. I think fires
have sort of transcended that though. It used to be the case that
everyone could sort of assume you had time to figure out what you were
gonna do — that you could leave if you needed to leave. And I think
we’ve seen some recent examples where that’s not always the case. Even
the things people thought were out-runnable or predictable, or would
come with meaningful warning — that’s not always the case..
As we talked about the last time we spoke, the smoke is a real issue
there too. You can have a house that you know is pretty safe from fire
risk, but that doesn’t mean that you’re insulated from toxic smoke.
That’s a really good point. The co-occurrence of really bad ozone days
and extreme particulates days — which is mostly from smoke because most
of the other sources have decreased — is actually increasing in the west
pretty dramatically in the last couple of decades. And that’s pretty
concerning from a public health perspective. You can’t escape it no
matter where you live, it’s just everywhere. It even made it to the east
coast this year.
I think about the story from the dust bowl, it’s told in [the Timothy
Egan book] The Worst Hard Time. There was a guy who was the head of the
soil conservation service at the time. There was this massive soil
erosion because of agricultural practices, and the dust bowl was
expanding and it was going to get to the point where it was just gonna
turn the central part of the country into a permanent desert. And the
soil scientist realized this. And I don’t know whether this was really
the catalyst for what followed but it did actually happen. He traveled
to D.C. and he was giving congressional testimony on how bad things were
and what needed to be done to fix it from a land management policy
perspective. And as he was about to enter the chamber, the sky got
really dark outside. He realized it was a dust storm that had made it
all the way to Washington from the Great Plains, the dust bowl region.
And he dramatically opened the shutters and said, look outside, this is
what it’s come to, it’s come for you here.
Part of me was thinking this past summer, when the sky got red across
New York and D.C., that it was sort of a similar moment. But I’m not
sure that there was any equivalent character. And there certainly is not
an equivalent Congress.
This article was updated to more clearly state that the fire did not
begin in a shopping center, but moved quickly there after ignition.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01/colorado-saw-the-return-of-the-urban-firestorm.html
/[ Obit for Grand Comedienne and a wildfire activist ]/
*One Less Spark (AZ) - Betty White & Smokey Bear*
Jun 5, 2014
WildlandFireAZ
One Less Spark - One Less Wildfire
Betty White, honorary forest ranger, joins Smokey Bear to help prevent
wildfires. Fire Prevention tips and ways you can help to keep our
firefighters and the public safe. One less spark could be one less wildfire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnXM02awTXo
/[ See the movie "Don't Look Up" on Netflix ]/
*Lighten up the satire? That’s a tall order when life is out-crazying
the most vivid fiction*
Catherine Bennett
Critics panned Don’t Look Up as ‘shrill’, but it was superb – and caught
outlandish reality
1 Jan 2022
In 1944, George Orwell got a letter from TS Eliot, a director at Faber,
rejecting his political satire, Animal Farm. There were several reasons.
First, it was not the right time. Also, said the creator of The Waste
Land, “the effect is simply one of negation”. The poet took issue, too,
with the wholesale disrespecting of pigs, since they were logically the
“best qualified to run the farm”, being the cleverest. “What was needed
(someone might argue) was not more communism but more public spirited pigs.”
So, if some leading film critics watching Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up
(currently most-watched on Netflix) have hankered for a less satirical
kind of satire, they are in distinguished company. TS Eliot might well
have agreed with these reviewers that McKay’s savaging of a society too
corrupt and deluded to save itself from an urgent threat to life on
Earth, in the film’s case, a comet, could have been more cheerfully
done. For instance, echoing Eliot on pigs, some of the more cartoonish
leads could have been made more relatable. How about humanising lead
villain Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance being mesmerising), a creepy tech
billionaire who, absurdly, intends to live forever? Meanwhile, McKay’s
US president, the preposterous Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) has appointed
her dreadful son chief of staff. Why can’t these grievous weirdos with
their silly dialogue be more like, say, Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg or
Elon Musk?
Even the obscure scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence)
attempting to convince an irresponsible leader and a clicks-obsessed
media that the Earth truly is in danger, should, it’s been suggested,
have been awarded intriguing personal journeys that would offset the
more apocalyptic content. Implicit in the professional objections to
this film – it is “angry”, “smug”, “sad”, “shrill”, “condescending”,
“scattergun”, “disastrous”, “insensitive”, “unfunny”, “depressing”,
“heavy handed” but also “toothless” – is the proposal that, if McKay
wanted to jolt disengaged people into noticing, even talking about,
collective complacency on global warming, some sort of gentler, more
immersive approach could have been more effective.
How would that work? Maybe imagine Swift’s A Modest Proposal if he’d cut
all the heavy-handed sarcasm, stopped droning on about mirrors and
considered how baby-eating made vegans feel. Or something akin to
political cartoons minus any dung, pigs or insensitive face/body caricature.
That the film has, however, an approval rating of 77% against the
critics’ 55% (on Rotten Tomatoes) could indicate that the public has a
relatively higher tolerance for angry, broad, insulting etc material, at
least when this feels like a justifiable response to current politics.
Though it helps if it’s funny, biting, gleefully performed by an
incredible cast and finally pulls off a massive tonal shift, from
propulsive near-farce to stillness and regret. “We really did have
everything, didn’t we?” says DiCaprio’s scientist.. “I mean, if you think
about it.” In fact, Don’t Look Up ends, for all its irksome negativity,
by telling us something unusually positive about satire. Maybe, for all
the repeated announcements of its death or terminal feebleness, this
genre can still be revived, as now, into vigorous, exhilarating life?
After the disparaging reviews, scientists in particular responded that
the film’s depiction of their discipline being ignored and trivialised
rings utterly true. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist, called it “the
most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate
breakdown I’ve seen”.
“Keep it light, fun,” the fictional scientists are exhorted, before
discussing imminent extinction on a Fox-like chatshow. And “couldn’t it
have been more light, fun?” is a fair summary, by coincidence, of the
advice for McKay from detractors.
Events dictated that his film offers an additional, aka “scattergun”,
commentary on leaders who in the pandemic favoured President Orlean’s
approach to an incoming health catastrophe: “sit tight and assess”. No
satirist could have anticipated Trump’s bleach advocacy or his fellow
fantasist Boris Johnson’s view of the virus as an adversary to be, when
he chose to acknowledge its existence, “wrestled to the floor”. McKay’s
film doesn’t feature a hilariously vain government figure shagging in
the face of extinction: sensitive audiences would probably have thought
a Hancockian character either in poor taste, heavy handed or simply
unbelievable. “It was already a crazy script but I would say reality
out-crazied us by like 10 to 15%,” McKay said. “Well done, reality.”
It’s largely because of this routine out-crazying by the usual suspects
that satire became the subject of repeated obituaries. But given the
professional bollocking administered to McKay’s death-defying production
it could also be that old-school, Swiftian satire – that is, not nice
and not nuanced – has itself dwindled in appeal. Supposing, as Professor
Robert Phiddian has argued, contemporary academics find the conventions
of satire frustratingly arbitrary and simplifying, it could be that
certain viewers similarly bridle at a film whose authorial intention
lies beyond productive dispute.
Though shamelessness in public life hasn’t, as it turns out, rendered
satire impossible, it hardly invites subtle treatment. How, with the
recommended light touch, is a satirist supposed to ridicule a leader
who, performing press-ups or other tricks for free editorial, counts his
absurdity as a superpower? Nor, given Boris Johnson’s likely successors,
is his departure likely to reset satirical standards to those prevailing
when Dr Strangelove, with which McKay’s film has been disobligingly
compared, was having fun with double entendres.
Liz Truss, Johnson’s would-be replacement, was posing in scarlet
costumes and an eye-catching new pompadour well before Meryl Streep was
accused by critics of overdoing it as the scarlet-suited, over-ringleted
President Orlean. Actually, when compared with Truss’s patriotic cheese
oration (“That. Is. A. Disgrace”), President Orlean’s rhetoric as she,
too, poses as saviour of the free world, is notably sane. Truss won’t be
impossible to satirise, but any attempt that isn’t at least unkind,
angry, shrill, insensitive, preposterous and depressing is likely to
look like PR.
/Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/01/lighten-up-satire-tall-order-life-out-crazying-even-science-fiction
/[ make changes, decide to survive, act globally, now ] /
*What Would It Look Like If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual
Emergency? Current Affairs*
As the dust settles on COP26, the 26th United Nations Climate Change
Conference, the results do not look good. Despite a flurry of
headline-grabbing pledges, national commitments bring us nowhere near to
meeting the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees. According to Climate
Action Tracker, 73% of existing “net-zero” pledges are weak and
inadequate—“lip service to climate action.”
It is possible to keep global heating under 1.5 degrees, but it
requires that we shift into emergency mode. And it requires us to
be honest with ourselves about the reality of what has to change. No
fairy tales.
*First,* we have to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and the
energy companies, bringing them under public control, just like any
other essential service or utility. This will allow us to wind down
fossil fuel production and use in line with science-based schedules,
without having to constantly fight fossil capital and their
propaganda. It also allows us to protect against price chaos, and
ration energy to where it’s needed most, to keep essential services
going.
At the same time, we need to scale down less-necessary parts of the
economy in order to reduce excess energy demand: SUVs, private jets,
commercial air travel, industrial beef, fast fashion, advertising,
planned obsolescence, the military industrial complex and so on. We
need to focus the economy on what is required for human well-being
and ecological stability, rather than on corporate profits and elite
consumption.
*Second*, we need to protect people by establishing a firm social
foundation—a social guarantee. We need to guarantee universal public
healthcare, housing, education, transport, water, and energy and
internet, so that everyone has access to the resources they need to
live well. And as unnecessary industrial production slows down, we
need to shorten the working week to share necessary labor more
evenly, and introduce a climate job guarantee to ensure that
everyone has access to a decent livelihood—with a basic income for
those who cannot work or who choose not to. This is the bread and
butter of a just transition...
- -
*Third,* we need to tax the rich out of existence. As Thomas Piketty
has pointed out, cutting the purchasing power of the rich is the
single most powerful way to reduce excess energy use and emissions.
This may sound radical, but think about it: it is irrational—and
dangerous—to continue supporting an over-consuming class in the
middle of a climate emergency. We cannot allow them to appropriate
energy so vastly beyond what anyone could reasonably need...
- -
*Fourth, *we need a massive public mobilization to achieve our
ecological goals. We need to build our renewable energy capacity,
expand public transport, insulate buildings, and regenerate
ecosystems. This requires public investment, but it also requires
labor. There’s a lot of work to do, and it won’t happen on its own.
This is where the climate job guarantee comes in. The job guarantee
will ensure that anyone who wants to can train to participate in the
most important collective projects of our generation, doing
dignified, socially necessary work with a living wage.
*Finally,* we need a strong commitment to climate reparations. Rich
countries have colonized the atmosphere for their own enrichment,
while inflicting the majority of the costs onto the global South.
This is an act of theft—theft of the atmospheric commons on which we
all rely—and it needs to be repaired. We need to support our sisters
and brothers in the South who already bear the overwhelming brunt of
a catastrophe that they have done little to create. This should
include a policy of debt cancellation, so poorer countries are no
longer forced to devote their limited resources to servicing the
demands of big banks and can instead focus on meeting people’s
needs. And renewable technologies should be transferred for free to
countries that cannot easily afford them, with patent waivers if
needed, to facilitate the fastest possible energy transition globally....
- -
This decade is the linchpin of history. We cannot afford to just sit
back and wait to see what happens. We have to capture political
power where we can, or otherwise force incumbents to change course.
www.currentaffairs.org
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/what-would-it-look-like-if-we-treated-climate-change-as-an-actual-emergency
/[ this is an important discussion, easy-to-understand. Young academics
talk future risk - 90 min video - science and philosophy ]/
*Extreme Climate Risks: What are the worst-case scenarios?*
Dec 15, 2021
Cambridge Zero
How bad could climate change get? Could the worst-cases result in global
catastrophe, or even long-term human extinction? In this panel, leading
scientists discuss what we know about the worst-case scenarios, what we
don’t know, and how we can study the catastrophic risks of climate change.
With Catherine Arnold, Luke Kemp, Tim Lenton (University of Cambridge)
and Goodwin Gibbins (University of Oxford).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkDbCpn0_9I
/[ Greta watch ]/
***Greta Thunberg says it's 'strange' Biden is considered a leader on
climate change*
TheHill.com
Greta Thunberg says it's 'strange' Biden is considered a leader on
climate change
12/28/21
Climate activist Greta Thunberg said it was "strange" that President
Biden is considered a leader in climate change and questioned his role
in tackling the climate crisis.
In an interview with The Washington Post published Monday, Thunberg was
asked if she was inspired by Biden or any world leaders fighting global
warming and climate change.
"If you call him a leader," Thunberg replied."I mean, it’s strange that
people think of Joe Biden as a leader for the climate when you see what
his administration is doing."
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/587463-greta-thunberg-says-its-strange-biden-is-considered-a-leader-on
- -
/[Clips from source material in Washington Post ]/
*Greta Thunberg on the State of the Climate Movement*
.... and the roots of her power as an activist
Interview by KK Ottesen
DECEMBER 27, 2021
Student and climate activist Greta Thunberg, 18, burst improbably onto
the world stage in late 2018 when what began as a one-person school
strike outside the Swedish parliament ended up galvanizing a global
climate movement to demand immediate action to prevent environmental
catastrophe.
Thunberg’s school strike spread in Sweden and around the world,
inspiring a youth-led global climate strike movement, Fridays for
Future, which urged cuts in carbon emissions. Her speeches at major
political gatherings, including the World Economic Forum, the British
Parliament, the U.S. Congress and, most recently, the United Nations
climate summit known as COP26, have castigated leaders for failing
future generations with their “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
Or, as she said in one speech, “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams
and my childhood with your empty words.”
Thunberg credits her Asperger’s syndrome, which is considered part of
the autism spectrum, for her truth-telling and focus as a climate
activist. She lives in Stockholm.
*You called COP26 a “failure” and a “PR event.”*
Well, in the final document, they succeeded in even watering down the
blah, blah, blah. Which is very much an achievement, if you see it that
way. Of course it’s a step forward that, instead of coming back every
five years, they’re doing it every year now. But still, that doesn’t
mean anything unless that actually leads to increased ambition and if
they actually fulfill those ambitions.
What do you mean when you say, “watering down the blah, blah, blah”?
As we all know, or as we might know, the so-called “f-word” was included
for the first time in this document: fossil fuel. Which makes you wonder
what they have been doing these decades without even mentioning fossil
fuels for a problem which, to a very, very large extent, is caused by
fossil fuels. And instead of “phasing out” [coal, the document’s
language became] “phasing down.” So, yeah, that is one very clear example.
And also, one question that was very up in the air was the question
about finance for loss and damage and the Green Climate Fund, which they
again failed to agree on. The money that has already been promised, the
bare minimum that the so-called global north have promised that they
will deliver, they failed to come to any conclusions, and it’s been
postponed once again.
*And what are positives that might have come out of COP26?*
....Nothing will come out of these conferences unless there is a huge
increase in the level of awareness and unless people actually go out on
the streets and demand change...
- -
*I read recently that at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions,
we have 11 years until we get to 1.5 degrees Celsius change [the Paris
agreement’s aspirational temperature threshold for heading off the worst
impacts of climate change]. How do you get people to focus on that?*
Well,...it’s just the principle that we need to understand: that we have
a very limited time, that we are using up the carbon dioxide budget
right now — no matter which carbon dioxide budget you go for — and that
cannot be undone in the future. Yes, we may be able to come up with new
technologies and scale them up so that we can absorb carbon dioxide from
the air, but you cannot undo the damage that has been done if we trigger
feedback loops and irreversible tipping points.
But also, we need to understand that 1.5 is not a safe level. Already,
as it is now — 1.1 or 1.2 — ...it has been happening for a long time —
and many people have been bearing witness to this and trying to tell
this, but they have been ignored.
*You’ve been very successful in getting energy and attention on this
issue over the last few years. Can you talk about first becoming aware
of the climate crisis yourself, and being galvanized to action?*
There’s a big difference between the first time I heard about the
climate crisis and when I actually understood its consequences. I heard
about it in school maybe when I was 7, 8 or 9....
....[My actions] started small at home, like turning off the lamps when I
wasn’t in the room and cutting down meat consumption and so on. And then
I did more: I stopped flying, and I stopped buying new things. I became
a vegetarian and a vegan. I tried to join organizations and marches and
sign petitions and the things that they recommend us to do. But that
didn’t have an effect.
*Was there a moment you moved from personal actions to a bigger scale?*
I remember I was on a call with other young people who cared about the
environment and were trying to figure out something to do,... I
presented my idea of school striking, and they weren’t very keen on the
idea. They didn’t think it was going to have an impact. ... And I was
like, “No, you clearly haven’t understood the climate crisis. This is an
emergency. This is not only supposed to be nice, this actually has to be
something important.” And I think we who have the privilege and the
opportunity to actually do something should go put ourselves out there.
So I hung up on the call. ...and I decided to go on and do it by myself.
*And that’s when you were 15, right?*
Yeah... So I decided to school strike. And then many others did the same
thing. And then we became a global movement.
*But before that, when did the weight of the emergency hit you?*
It was just the cognitive dissonance that I saw with everyone around me.
My parents, my classmates, everyone I met. They were like, “Oh, what are
your interests?” And I said, “I’m interested in the climate because it’s
an emergency.” They’re like, “Oh, that’s fun.” And I was like, “You
clearly don’t get this.” Because everyone said, “I care about climate
change. I think it’s very important.” And then they don’t do anything.
And that got to me because I’m autistic, and I don’t like when people
say one thing and then do another thing. I have to live true to my
values, so to speak. Like, I remember one time I was talking to my dad,
and he said, “I want to buy a new car. This SUV looks really nice..” And
I was like, “But you said you cared about the climate.” He was like, “I
do, but you can still do both.” And I was like, “No, you cannot.” And I
got really upset.
*You’ve quipped that if more people had autism or Asperger’s maybe we
would do better in focusing on the climate crisis and not continuing to
justify the trade-offs in our own minds.*
Of course not to romanticize autism or say that people should have
autism. Because, under the wrong circumstances, autism can be something
that holds you back. But I think that there are definitely many elements
of what makes you autistic that more people should have. For example, us
not having as much cognitive dissonance and being able to focus on
facts, it’s a good thing. And being able to focus on an emergency and
actually treat it as an emergency.
It feels like many today — neurotypical people, people in general — are
so focused on following the stream, doing like everyone else, because
they don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to be uncomfortable. They
don’t want to cause any problems. They just want to be like everyone
else. And I think that’s very harmful in an emergency where we are
social animals. We’re herd animals. In an emergency, someone needs to
say that we’re heading towards the cliff. And everyone is just
following, saying like, “Well, no one else is turning around, so I won’t
either.” That could be very dangerous.
*
**Do you think one of the reasons you were so effective right away was
because it was a shock to hear this small, young girl speaking
uncomfortable truth to adults who were supposedly the experts?*
Well, there have been many, many young people — many people — who have
been speaking out on this. I’m not the only one who has gained attention
on this. But, of course, many people have listened to me. And I’m very
privileged to come from a part of the world where I have the opportunity
to use my voice and to be listened to. But we just go straight to the
point. We don’t care for the blah, blah, blah, so to speak. We say just
what we want to be said. And we are not scared of being uncomfortable.
We are not scared of being unpopular. We are ridiculed and mocked and
hated on and sent threats — and that’s not something that should be
romanticized in any way. But many are still going because we know that
what we are doing is right. It’s just the idea of: We don’t care about
our reputation; we care more about the planet.
*There are clearly people interested in climate change who take a more
diplomatic tack, aware that they have to compromise to get things done.
Do you ever worry that the “blah, blah, blah,” or more combative
rhetoric, makes their job harder when they’re trying to do the right
thing, just from a more temperate position?*
If you choose, as the media often do, like, 20 seconds from a 10-minute
speech and just look at those 20 seconds, it may seem like we have
undemocratic views and that we are very populist and so on. Which is not
true. So I understand that some people might think that way and that
they frame it that way.
Of course we need compromises. But we have to also understand that we
cannot compromise with the laws of physics. If we are here [gestures],
and we need to be there [gestures again] to have, say, safe living
conditions, and they are talking about moving [just a tiny bit], then I
would rather say no. Yes, it’s better than nothing, but we have to zoom
out and understand that we’re not going to get there if we pretend that
this is enough.
*Strategically, do you ever feel the need to change your tack these
days, to say, “Okay, this is what people might expect me to say now, and
so here’s a new way to shock people out of their complacency”?*
At the speech I gave in the U.N. General Assembly, I said, “How dare
you!” Of course, I said many other things, but that was what people took
out of it. And me being emotional and angry, yelling at world leaders.
And then I thought that, Okay, now I have people’s attention, I will
only speak facts. So in the speech [in Madrid] at COP25 after that, I
basically only spoke about facts and numbers because so much attention
was on that. And then people watched it, and it felt like no one
understood a word I said. Because sometimes the news is just that I’m
making a speech rather than what I have to say — very, very often.. So
that’s a way of trying to, I don’t know, surprise, if that’s the right word.
*Are you inspired by any of the world leaders, by President Biden?*
If you call him a leader — I mean, it’s strange that people think of Joe
Biden as a leader for the climate when you see what his administration
is doing. The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. Why
is the U.S. doing that? It should not fall on us activists and teenagers
who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform
people that we are actually facing an emergency.
People ask us, “What do you want?” “What do you want politicians to do?”
And we say, first of all, we have to actually understand what is the
emergency. We are trying to find a solution of a crisis that we don’t
understand. For example, in Sweden, we ignore — we don’t even count or
include more than two-thirds of our actual emissions. How can we solve a
crisis if we ignore more than two-thirds of it? So it’s all about the
narrative. It’s all about, what are we actually trying to solve? Is it
this emergency, or is it this emergency?
*You have become a hero to young people, yet you were bullied as a kid
and socially isolated. It must be sort of complicated now that young
people who previously didn’t support you or give you the time of day are
putting you on a pedestal.*
Yeah, I was scared of other young people when I first started school
striking. So it was very weird to have other young people join me; it
was a very strange feeling. Because I didn’t know how they would react
and how they would think.
*What can you tell other young people, both those experiencing bullying
and maybe those doing the bullying, to help them move to a better place?*
Just to those who are experiencing it that you are not alone. There are
many, many others who are experiencing this same thing — many more than
you think — beneath the surface. And it should not be like that.
Children can be very, very mean. But being strange is a good thing. I
think most people in the climate movement are a bit strange — very much
including myself. And that is a good thing because, if you’re not
different, you are not able to envision another future, another world.
And we need people who are able to think outside the box. So being
different is something that should be celebrated.
*Do you draw a connection between empathy for each other on a small
level and empathy as a global community with climate change and climate
justice?*
Of course. Since there are no binding agreements that safely put us
towards a safe future for life on Earth as we know it, that means that
we have to use morals, and we have to be able to feel empathy with one
another. That is all we have right now. Some people say that we
shouldn’t use guilt or this sense of morality. But that is, quite
frankly, the only thing that we have to use. So, therefore, we have to
use it. And we have to make sure that we don’t lose that connection. We
have to realize that we’re in it for the long run and that we need to
take care of each other.
*As somebody who had been living in social isolation before speaking
out, how did you handle both the positive adulation and the sometimes
very personal negative criticism, even from world leaders, on Twitter
and other places?*
I don’t know. I didn’t think too much about it. I just thought: I’m
doing what is right, and as long as I’m doing what’s right, what I think
is right, it doesn’t matter what others think... But I think just the
fact that I was so different before made it easier to stay grounded and
not to listen too much to what other people were saying, both positively
and negatively.
*Can you get to the place in your mind where you say, Okay, it’s 30
years hence, and we were successful? What does that look like? And then
what do you get to focus on in your life?*
I have no idea. I try not to think about that too much. I try to rather
do as much as I can in the now and change the future instead of
overthinking the future. Hopefully we will take care of this, however
that would look. But no matter what happens, if we continue to ignore
it, the consequences are going to be much, much worse.
*What do you do when you need a break?*
I take occasional breaks. Like, this is my life all day, every day, but
that doesn’t mean I cannot focus on other things. I can focus on several
things. For example, school. Although now we’re actually talking about
the climate. So I can’t get away there, either!
*So does the teacher just turn it over to you: “Greta …”?*
[Laughs.] We’re in climate role play. We’re going to represent different
countries, and then we’re going to reenact a climate conference, make
speeches and be delegates, try to come up with a resolution. And I’m
going to be Saudi Arabia.
*Perfect.*
I’m going to block everything. Yeah, I’m going to make sure that they
don’t come up with a resolution.
*After the experience of the last few years, its roller-coaster up and
down, do you find yourself more or less hopeful than when you first sat
out in front of the Swedish parliament with your [“SKOLSTREJK FOR
KLIMATET”] sign?*
I don’t know. In one sense, we’re in a much worse place than we were
then because the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher and the
global emissions are still rising at almost record speed. And we have
wasted several years of blah, blah, blah.
But then, on another note, we have seen what people can do when we
actually come together. And I’ve met so many people who give me very
much hope and just the possibility that we can actually change things.
That we can treat a crisis like a crisis. So I think I’m more hopeful now.
*What can we learn from the pandemic about what can be accomplished when
people do, in fact, treat a crisis like a crisis?*
I think many people have realized how important science is. Because we
saw how, when we really wanted to find a vaccine, we could do that in,
like, no time. Which just shows that, if we actually focus on something,
if we actually want something, we can accomplish almost anything...
- -
But also, it has just shown how fast social norms can change. And I
think that can be something that we can learn from it. If I would have
gone up to someone and shaken hands with them during the worst part of
the pandemic, that would have been totally unacceptable. But just before
the pandemic, everyone did that. It changed, basically overnight,
people’s mindsets. And that just shows the possibilities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/27/greta-thunberg-state-climate-movement-roots-her-power-an-activist/?itid=hp_Climate%20box
/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming January 2, 2014*
January 2, 2014:
*Chris Mooney of Mother Jones explains to the willfully ignorant
that****snow doesn't disprove climate change.*
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/blizzards-dont-refute-global-warming
- -
* MSNBC's Chris Hayes and climate scientist Michael Mann point out the**
**absolute stupidity of the right-wing claim that snow disproves climate**
**change.*
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/right-mocks-rescued-climate-scientists-105626691902
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/theres-global-warming-and-its-snowing-105637955899
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
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