Greta's Secret Power

Greta Thunberg’s enemies are right to be scared. Her new political allies should be too; Liberal leaders line up to praise her, yet their inaction on the climate crisis shows they are not really listening to her message

Stephen Buranyi, 30 September 2019 (UK Guardian)

“…[Greta Thunberg] only asks world leaders to] listen to the scientists…[Her argument is simply that carbon moves the crisis] forward, and anything that facilitates that must be bad. She judges long-touted paradigms of ‘green growth’ and market-based solutions as failures…[She describes her supporters as ‘mocked’ and ‘lied about’ by] the elite…This framing releases ordinary people from complicity in the climate crisis…It isn’t just that Thunberg has made climate politics popular, she has – for the first time since the early days of the climate justice movement – made them populist on a large scale…A good reactionary recognises the potential vehicle for real change, and they hate it…

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It’s not clear where Thunberg’s politics lie, or where they will go in the future, but her rhetoric mirrors the left of the environmental movement…[She is] visibly angry…[and] her main rhetorical targets are not denialist wingnuts, but the same mainstream politicians who invite her to speak and praise her activism…[They] don’t appear to hear her when she says it’s their fault her life is ruined. It’s the reaction of a group who have long considered themselves on the correct side of the climate divide, and thus, of history…Thunberg’s great contribution is to convince the wider public of the bankruptcy of that outlook, and to indict years of missed targets as the failures that they are. Politicians don’t appear to take this shift, or her, very seriously…For the moment she and the movement she has invigorated are in a strange place, commanding immense popular support for a radical cause, and simultaneously praised by the very people they identify as the problem.” click here for more

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