People often say they’d like to do something but they’re too small and powerless to deal with the massive environmental problems overtaking the natural world and our civilization, a civilization totally dependent on nature. They understand the scale of the problem. They see the Amazon rainforest burning and know the images are authentic, not photoshopped. They hate what they see and what some people are doing, which intensifies their feeling of powerlessness.
These feelings may be real, but they mask a deeper complexity. The sub-conscious meta-message hidden beneath the surface of the confession goes something like this:
“I know there are big problems and I don’t like them. I wish I could do something but I can’t, and I can’t because I don’t want to change. I like my lifestyle and privileges. I love the conveniences they provide. Someone else with more power and influence will get it sorted. That’s why we have leaders. I’m too small to make a difference.”
And of course the internal rap works. Cop-out and denial are secured and allow one to go on with what feels like a clear conscience. But it’s self-delusion, a massive lie.
A year ago a mildly autistic 15-year-old Swedish girl named Greta took up her lonely vigil on the stone steps of the Parliament Building in Stockholm. She was alone, depressed, ignored. But she soldiered on, would not give in and up. She had the permission of her parents to strike, to stay away from school for three weeks. Her school relented too when the parents argued her case. Sweden after all is a progressive land and Swedes are rather proud of their progressiveness. Let the child have her way for a while. It won’t last. Eventually she’ll come back to school. She did but only for four days a week, not five. The strike would continue indefinitely on Fridays. And so she persisted.
At 15 she was too young to vote, to have a driver’s licence, to earn decent money. She’s also a girl, a member of the female gender, the second sex, the one that often gets ahead on the basis of good looks and feminine charm as opposed to ability and merit. Men like their toys and ornaments. They like their egos enhanced. They are the decision makers, the power brokers. Which is why we’re in the mess we’re in.
The weather in Sweden can be grey, even in summer, so Greta often wore her yellow raincoat and crouched by her handwritten sign: Skolstrejk för Klimatet (School Strike for Climate). She was small, anonymous, neglected, powerless.
But something happened. Photos and videos of her were made and uploaded. The images spread, went viral in cyberspace. Thousands, then millions saw them. Overnight, or nearly, her vigil was seen, understood, appreciated, supported.
She is not alone anymore. She is not too small to make a difference. She put herself on the line to say what’s true. What point in studying, school, education, qualifications if there’s no future in which to apply skills and knowledge? What could her teachers say to that? They were mute. It took a child to ask the intelligent question that invites hard answers.
Our cover is blown now. We are exposed. We adults have failed and betrayed Greta and her generation. We thought we loved them and probably did but we have failed to provide a world in which their own love can flourish. We thought that inventing the wheel or building jet aircraft would express our love. It couldn’t. We were wrong. The crisis is moral first, technological second. We have no values, no imagination, and it’s these deficiencies that are destroying the natural world, the only one we have.
Our economics are mad, our politics useless. We don’t know how to live because we aren’t wise and mature. If nature indeed was a garden like Eden, we have cast ourselves out of it. And not just us, of course. Birds and insects and forests and rivers are dying, disappearing. Sixty percent of all mammal species are on the verge of extinction. Yet we dither, argue, form committees, release papers, make quotas and proclamations and promises. The words sound good and pacify us, but they are nothing more than the reshuffling of personnel inside the fire department while the house burns down. Meanwhile the things that are important — football, say, or Formula-One and the Oscar awards — go on to reassure us that all is fine.
Greta is appalled by our behaviour and is right to be. We aren’t sincere. We’ve been dissembling and obfuscating for so long that these things seem normal, the new ethics. But she and her generation are not fooled by our crass idiocies, by our corruption and immorality. We’ve been called out and can no longer hide behind our pronouncements, euphemisms and lies. But of course some have made a career out of it and are adept at deception. They keep trying — the CEOs, shareholders, bankers, lawyers, conglomerates and politicians, the unscrupulous ones still among us protected by laws they have helped enact through power broking and influence.
It’s obvious now what has to happen. The whole conniving charade, the house of cards, has to collapse if real reform and change is to occur. The white-collar swindlers and plunderers have to be turfed out if the natural world is going to survive. Greta doesn’t say so directly here in this small book that contains the texts of her speeches. But she thinks and means it when you read between the lines.
The speeches are perfect. They are sincere and honest, moral and mature. They are also eloquent in their simple, plain-spoken way. They come from the heart. But they are not dreamy. They are based on scientific facts made from evidence.
Greta and her generation do not want hope, sympathy and praise from us. To them these gestures are hollow, moral playacting made by our guilt. They are tired of our talk, sick of us. They know we are failures and want a better world and future than the shoddy one we are trying to hand to them. They see through our lies. Which is why I support them, stand in solidarity with them.
You can too. Support them. Join them. Encourage them. Strike with them. Rebel. Rage against the machine, against the ugly, diminished and stricken world we are creating for them. It isn’t about the Dow Jones Industrial Average and never was. That too is a con job, a crap shoot. It’s about and has always been about elemental sanities rooted in the earth, not in our business schemes.
It’s not going to work — this civilization and its attitudes. The supplies are running out and at some point we’ll hit rock bottom. What then? Primitive savagery if we can still eat and breathe.
What’s to stop it? Nothing unless the pressures that force it to change come from below. That is the only hope — a non-violent army of massed young people who hold us accountable for our sins and incarcerate the worst of the sinners among us for the ecocide they are committing. That’s the fear among the ruling class of course, the fear that they will be caught out, made accountable for their eco crimes and punished for them. Good. Let them sweat. Their day of reckoning is coming if sanity is to prevail.
You may not think you need to support Greta now, but you will after reading this thin, small, profound and beautiful book, and it might be one of the wisest things you ever do.
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Good little book, shame about the damage...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 February 2020
A collection of her speaches, this will be good for my scout troop to get them understanding climate change and how they can make a difference.Stars lost as the book has arrived damaged as can be seen in the photos, obviously caused by the machines picking the book as there is no damage to the packaging. It won't stop me using it but think more care should be taken.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 February 2020
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