She's literally a child lecturing the grownups. It fits that "emperor has no clothes"/out of the mouths of babes trope.

The people who back her want to hold her up as someone wise beyond her years. The entire thing is primarily an appeal to emotion.

Greta is the face of the idea that there is a simple and obvious answer that could be readily implemented, if only us sinners would get up off our slothful, gluttonous sorry asses and Do The Right Thing.

Real and viable solutions tend to be more nuanced than that and allow for the complexity of the real world. But arguing against this essentially cute little tribble of a media sensation makes you "obviously stupid" plus a monstrous asshole who clearly kicks puppies as one of your hobbies.

That rankles people who recognize the attempt to win by manipulative social bullshit and thereby simply shut down substantive discussion of a genuine and serious problem that, no, is not going to be resolved by telling 7 billion people to Just Behave!

It doesn't help that the Pope blessed her work, basically. That just doubles down on all the high handed, moralizing preachy nonsense that swirls around her.

>The people who back her want to hold her up as someone wise beyond her years. The entire thing is primarily an appeal to emotion.

She's telling a story that directs a lot of attention to an important issue, no more, no less. It sounds to me as if you're criticizing her essentially for telling a compelling story. What standard are you holding her to? She's not a politician, CEO, engineer, etc. ...

>Greta is the face of the idea that there is a simple and obvious answer that could be readily implemented, if only us sinners would get up off our slothful, gluttonous sorry asses and Do The Right Thing.

Your choice of words, not anyone elses. The fact that this is what her words sound like to you does help answer my original question (where all the hate comes from) though (see atoav's sibling comment...).

The rest of your comment is basically saying that she makes a complex issue sound too simple. Maybe so, but claiming that something is "too complex" is often an excuse for not doing anything.

In fact, quite a lot could be achieved by measures that are relatively simple. A carbon tax would be a great example. If the publicity she's generated can speed up the introduction of such a tax, she'll have done more for our future than most of the experts she's apparently supposed to defer to.

I've lived without a car for more than a decade. I walked cross country from Georgia to California and accepted rides while homeless. I took a train out of California to get back into housing elsewhere.

I'm an environmental studies major. I don't lecture rich people for taking planes to where they need to be. I also don't make plane trips myself for the express purpose of telling people "You rich assholes need to shrink your god-damned carbon footprint."

I abhor hypocrisy. There's not much I hate more than people going "Do as I say, not as I do."

I was just trying to take your question at face value and answer it in hopes of being helpful. Otherwise I would have stayed out of this ridiculous theater, which probably would have been the better choice because then I wouldn't be getting ragged on for trying to answer your question.

She has made a point of never travelling by air. All her journeys within Europe have been by rail. She went because as the schools strikes spread across Europe, she has been invited. She crossed the Atlantic to next week's UN summit, as a racing yacht which was going to make the journey anyway, offered her a place on board.

Governments around Europe and the EU parliament have again invited her to speak. So she has.

So what to do, tell them all to piss off?

Pretending that a legal minor has this much agency is a lie on the face of it.

If she were having sex with all these adults, everyone would call that statutory rape (and worse). Everyone would decry "How can you blatantly use a child like that?!!!"

But her being used politically seems fine to most people.

B. The Pope should be tending his own flock and cleaning up his own mess. Him using a child like her to further his own political ends makes me go "Gee, I wonder why Arch Bishops and the like seem to think using children to meet their sexual needs is A-okay!".

The Pope owes her an apology in my mind.

I don't harp on this stuff in part because I'm not Catholic and I have a grudging respect for the work he has done to clean up the mess with the Catholic church, but I was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of years and I was very protective of my own special-needs sons. I have seen her described as autistic. Why are her parents allowing this? I don't get that.

C. The internet exists. Video exists. If she is so much more holier than thou, she could create a website (as her primary means to share her message) and she could do her testimony at these events she is invited to via video conferencing/prerecorded video.

When you want to be the face of a moral argument, it isn't enough to not be guilty of X. There needs to be no appearance of impropriety.

If you have to explain to people that gallivanting all over the world is somehow totes different here because it was by train and other vehicles that "were going there anyway," instead of saying "I refuse to complain about traffic while being traffic," then you are diluting your message.

Gandhi did a lot of things for which I think he deserves criticism, such as sleeping with naked girls to supposedly prove to himself he could resist temptation. But he succeeded in his goal because he walked the walk on things pertinent to his message concerning how to get economically free of England.

He wore very little and wove what little he wore. He didn't argue that other people should burn their British clothes, but he needed to dress appropriately for a world leader so he needed to be an exception.

I could probably find other things to say here, but I'm very much regretting saying anything at all. I've paid very little attention to the whole thing because the whole thing strikes me as bullshit theater using a child as its political puppet, so none of it sits well with me, not as a mother and not as an environmental studies major who has endeavored to live by my beliefs instead of lecturing the world to shrink its carbon footprint while I do otherwise.

I may never get much press. I get that. But I'm comfortable with the choices I am making for myself without trying to hold other people to a standard I can't be arsed to try to meet because, well, you know, my message is so important or something.

She's clearly entitled to express an opinion, and old enough to form them. I had political and plenty of other opinions at 16, and I'm sure you did. You probably still feel the same on some. All political parties have youth branches that are freely permitted without global cries of indoctrination! Though some may verge into indoctrination. Climate's an issue that will clearly affect a youngster's future more than yours or mine - I'm past half way in my life, they have 60+ years ahead. My kids see the climate response in far starker terms than most adults, though they're a little older.

If she were mere puppet or pawn, I'm pretty sure the resentment, insincerity and unwillingness would be clear and bloody obvious.

Being young doesn't discount you from having a opinion, or wanting to change something. So is it discounting the opinion simply because she has proven somewhat successful? It certainly seems that way in many of the media attacks she's received - and brushed off. There was a coal or oil trade body that recently put out a wonderful statement something along the lines of seeing her as one of their biggest threats. Great reason to keep on doing what she is doing then, no? Doubly so if politicians are actually bloody listening.

That some sections of the media paint her as $deity and others as $anti-deity is absurd and wrong.

On mention of autistic, I'm at a loss. She's described as autistic as it's an accepted term for someone on the autism spectrum in Europe. My friend with an autistic child would, and has, called them autistic when the need arises. Why is that a problem? How would someone with autism be properly referred to in the US? How is it inappropriate? She's certainly freely mentioned it in interview in the past. Some sections of the media have tried to use it as a means of personal attack, but surely better to acknowledge her situation than try to hide it?

OK, so you think we should not travel at all if we have an opinion on fixing emissions. That rules out all of us. That seems far too convenient to one side of the argument though. I couldn't go to a demonstration without travelling. So sign an online petition instead or throw up another blog I guess. That doesn't get to influence decision makers though.

We all get to make trade-offs within the globalised system we have right now. Whilst agitating and striving to improve it with the least impact practicable on whatever issue we find important.

I think you have misunderstood my point.

Autism is socially impairing. People with autism have trouble dealing with social stuff. So she is probably less qualified than most 16 year olds to try to figure out how fame at a young age is likely to impact her.

Most people with autism get inculcated with social programming that I think is harmful. It's an attempt to get them to behave more normally, which is usually a fundamental violation of their personal boundaries.

It's a little like introverts being told that they are weird and need to socialize the same way that extroverts do, that there is something inherently bad and broken about wanting a lot of time alone.

If she were someone with a mental IQ of 70, would you be vociferously defending her right to express herself politically? Or would you be taking a side-eyes view at the whole thing and wondering how much of this was really their opinion and how much of this was someone with more power than them using them as a puppet?

If you have a "social IQ" of 70 and are dealing with an inherently highly social arena -- politics -- at a young age, isn't that something we should wonder at?

I worry at the harm being done to her for no real gain. There was a story on HN not that long ago about a girl who was brutally raped while still a child and wrote a book about it. She ultimately committed suicide while still a minor, which made the press because she asked for assisted suicide under the laws of her country and was denied it, then took her own life anyway.

I was raped as a child. I was also in gifted programs from an early age. I got my act together in part because I walked away from the limelight and had a very private life for a lot of years.

This kind of fame means you live in a fish bowl. The press is notorious for raking awkward adolescents over the coals for being fat, not dressing adequately well, etc. Such as the children of celebrities and the daughter of the Clintons. Growing up in the limelight can be very hard on someone with normal levels of social skills.

So my concern here is that she is essentially being abused and doesn't understand the social consequences well enough to realize it yet. That's my concern.

OK, so you think we should not travel at all if we have an opinion on fixing emissions.

No, this is absolutely not at all anything I think or said. It in no way fits with my statement that I don't lecture rich people for flying to where they need to fly.

Those are clarifications. I have zero interest in pursuing what looks to me like a fruitless and pointless argument.

You have a good day.

Perhaps. Yet by being known for being direct, and somewhat asocial as seems to be the case with many with autism, she seems to have been uniquely able to cut through the bullshit. I can think of few others that so many politicians would have been willing to listen to, to anything like the same extent. Except other politicians and heads of state.

I well understand the concern about possible future consequences. Not sure how stridently I'd try and prevent her if she were my child though. That's the sort of thing that may have the kid packing and leaving if you try and stop it. Heck, all kids are in a fishbowl thanks to social, YT etc.

I've not heard of social programming - it doesn't seem to be among the support my mate with the autistic child received. It manages to sound rather dystopian.

Again, from my end, it feels very, very much like you are putting words in my mouth. (That's not to imply it is on purpose.)

Protecting a child's right to choose is the exact opposite of stridently trying to prevent them from doing something. That's outright denying them a choice. It is wholly unrelated to anything I did as a parent and outright antithetical to it.

I've redacted multiple paragraphs from my draft. Suffice it to say I raised two special needs sons who likely qualify for a diagnosis on the autism spectrum and I have firsthand experience with trying to protect their right to choose when they were teenagers in the face of a world that doesn't really want to respect that for anyone at all, not even adults.

It's not easy to pull off, even without being at the center of this much public attention, which only magnifies the problem.

Point being, it's an almost impossible problem - I'd want to support them, but try and minimise harm. If that meant going along and trying to keep the worst of the media out of their face, so be it. I'd also want to make damn sure they knew what they were getting into. You know teenagers - trying to advise against something, or even giving pros and cons, can end up encouraging. Sometimes it feels like it guarantees it. :)

There's no chance Greta or her parents expected or could have predicted the extent to which it has escalated. Yet somehow she has been almost uniquely successful in having apparent influence on climate. There must have been discussions of whether she wants to keep going in the crazy escalation that sprang up, or whether it's getting out of control. Least I bloody hope so.

I just hope the world, and media, plays along when or if she decides to withdraw from a life in public, or has had enough, and the ending doesn't involve having to pick up the pieces. The world's media isn't very good at that bit.

Peace. :)

Mhm, maybe, but not in native Sweden.

I'm well aware there are very real problems with acting like 18 is some hard and fast cut-off between genuinely consenting sex and some kind of abuse based on inability to make such a decision. But this is not the equivalent of a 16 year old girl having a 20 year old boyfriend. There isn't just one single adult involved in this scenario with this 16 year old.

Sounds like you're far, far less effective in your environmentalism than Ms. Thunberg. It must be pleasant that you have your personal purity and sense self-righteousness, but none of that that will help blunt the impact of the climate crisis.

The fact that media isn't paying any attention to me and my accomplishments isn't evidence that I'm accomplishing nothing. It just makes me easy pickings for internet strangers to try to treat dismissively.

Notwithstanding the pre-existing culture war, using a child to lecture adults just seems like a terrible PR strategy, and to me explains most of the backlash she's getting.

I think her net effect will turn out to be negative for her cause.

People don't like being talked down to. Is it that hard to understand?

It's said people behind her are coming voters.

> People don't like being talked down to. Is it that hard to understand?

Have you heard how she is being talked down to?

It will be remembered view smearing is all they had when confronted with that.

It was an opportunity to get things moving, to get people behind a project and they turned it down (again).

She's a woman, she's young, she's autistic.

She faces a triple-whammy of discrimination because of that.

She's also calmly reminding people that climate change is real and poses a risk of harm to the world, and she's actually doing something to stop that. For some reason climate change is absurdly polarised.

...No she does not. In this context, one would argue that, on the contrary she benefits from these. Would she have had the same journey, had she been a 50 year old "regular" (non autistic) man? No one would have cared.

You can't have both.

Now any disagreement with the movement can be dismissed with allegations of discrimination instead of discussing the issue.

But people didn't listen - or rather, enough people didn't listen, and now we have to listen to a young autistic teenager girl berating us for sitting idle while the world burns (metaphorically speaking), and IMHO we all deserve it, and you'd better get used to it, because that's not even the remotely worse part of the climate change.

Here's where you lose me. I don't see a world burning, and past predictions of coming apocalypse have proven false.

Yes, the world is warming. We're going back to the temperature of the world a few million years ago, still much cooler than it was during most of the history of life on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

If the NASA and IPCC graphs of global temperature, and rate of change don't convince you, nothing will.

Most predictions on climate heating are turning out to be far worse in actuality. Sea level rise is neatly tracking the IPCC's worst case prediction. Yet they're still putting out the middle ground , conservative case.

Apocalyptic language is not scientific. But when the facts don't inspire action, activists resort to hyperbole and distortion.

Warming or burning, it's shaping up to ruin society as we know it. At least if we are going to believe the scientists and economists at the IPCC. They seem to be expecting at least two of the four horsemen. That seems pretty apocalyptic to me.

If that;s not enough to inspire action, what the hell is? New York knee deep in water?

Disagree. The effect to society the warming causes is apocalyptic (1 billion climate refugees). Pointing to rising sea level and temperature is the cause, the effect is our society being unrecognizable in a few short decades.

It works the earth as well. we're in the middle of a fever, leaving it like that will cause damage to organs. Leave it too long those organs (polar regions, tropical areas, ocean temps) will fail. These failures lead to chain reactions that equate to system failures. entire regions will become uninhabitable. Those on the extreme edge of survivable regions will have to leave to areas that can support them. Those that are use to living in "golden zones" are going to experience climate changes that turn those areas into very uncomfortable and potentially survivable conditions.

The language is accurate, its just not precise or pretty.

(My original response didn't belong either, so I edited it.)

As humans did not live on Earth a few million years ago, insofar as human society is concerned, why would the fact that temperatures had previously occurred a few million years ago be even slightly inconsistent with them being apocalyptic?

No, it's evidence both for the general conclusion and that specific point, it doesn't require that point as an assumption.

Evidence is any fact whose existence makes a conclusion more likely than it would be in the absence of that fact.

In other words, the mere fact that something happened isn't evidence for a proposed (even plausible) cause. Proving the cause requires further evidence.

So, if you mean we get to enjoy living in conditions fit for apes, then you might be on to something, but I wouldn't exactly rejoice about it...

She's also calmly reminding people that climate change is real

People don't need reminding. They heard nothing else for decades. It's not like it just slipped people's minds.

A hypocritical little girl (not a woman), with no experience of the world, is not going to suddenly get everyone to stop using cars or flying in airplanes. She isn't even willing to do that herself, as her stunt with the yaught that had to be sailed back home by people who flew to the destination showed.

For some reason climate change is absurdly polarised.

It's polarised because it's used as a stick to try and force hard left policies on the world, so anyone who isn't hard left will naturally be suspicious that the proposed remedies are all wrong and quite possibly the problem too.

This is especially true given the frequent unreliability of academics who claim to understand highly complex systems (e.g. economists), the failure of many previous predictions by climate scientists, and the near-violent hatred dished out to anyone who takes a skeptical position.

Recall that Thunberg argues for reducing carbon emissions by 50% in about 10 years. She offers no ideas for how to do that without causing a total collapse of global society that kills millions of people, the very thing that climate change activists claim they're trying to avoid. It is natural for people to consider that unhelpful at best, or self-promoting BS at worst. Why wouldn't people find her polarising?

In the end the only people who can really make a difference here are scientists and engineers. Thunberg is neither. She has literally nothing to contribute and should go back to school.

However, I like to think that there's at least some inkling that if a sufficient number of 16 years old are this uncompromising then anyone voting for climate denial today is just storing up problems for themselves in the future as these kids will be the ones paying for their retirement. And if they're paying for a needless climate emergency at the same time, sympathy is going to be in short supply.

The problem I have is that there is a plethora of very powerful people hiding behind her[1] when she says ‘listen to science’ it means ‘listen to those people’. But you cannot debate with what those people propose because you are only presented with Greta, and any critique is countered with ‘how dare you criticise a child’

[1] For example she is working with greenpeace who’s agenda on climate is IMHO completely removed from science

[1] https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789177951117/scener-ur-hjartat/ [2] https://uvell.se/2019/04/25/iles-pr-byran-bakom-greta-thunbe...

Scratch most environmentalist attention-seekers, and you'll find hypocrisy. Look at Prince Harry.

I think you can both fly on planes and believe we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels dramatically. You can both believe that we should pay more tax to fund public services while not donating additional income to the government. You can work for Amazon while thinking they should pay their workers more. You can believe that the way the food industry treats animals is awful without being a vegan.

In my opinion, being a complete paragon of virtue is not a prerequisite of having an opinion on what would make the world a better place.

We all live in this system, and she's not advocating for living outside the system, she's advocating for changing it.

Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow. We're advocating for developing technology so that within a few decades we can be carbon neutral.

You should read the Green New Deal. Not tomorrow, no, but one goal is to make flying infinitesimally rare.

Have you heard about flight shaming? Some aren't just advocating for it, they are trying to enforce it.

Sure, sure. So trying to enforce it doesn't mean you'd argue for it? Sorry, that doesn't compute. It's fine to argue for it, btw. But claiming that "nobody does that"? Come on, that's nonsense.

People just can't stand such hypocrisy.

The whole discussion is – frankly – quite ridiculous. Anybody who likes to lead it should really sit down, pause and really ask themselves what they are doing and why.

There is really only one compelling reason that comes to my mind why one would find the motivation to critizise environmentalists online for not beeing environmentalistic enough: their actions make you feel bad for some reason. You want the bad feeling to go away, so you find a explaination why they are bad. But it turns out the world still thinks they are good. Now you are in a bit of a problem. So you go online and try to change the world.

Only: it might be better for you and everybody around you if you instead went and tried to change yourself. This is of course much much harder, but lying to yourself about your own motivations has also it's costs..

Not at all. I already live a very spartan life and my carbon footprint is well below of most people who go around lecturing others on sustainable lifestyle. Eg, in the past 12 months, I have traveled zero miles on fossil fuels.

The class of professional globetrotting climate activists is so unbearable because they are among the worst polluters, yet spare no energy looking down on others for not doing enough.

[citation needed]

Another thing: this isn't an issue where it is soley about personal carbon footprints. It is nice to do something on a personal level, but we are in deep fucking need of big political measures. Don't get me wrong, I cycle everywhere. I don't own a car, the wood that I own makes my carbon footprint negative – but that isn't going to save the planet, because only very few people are lucky enough to even be able considering adopting such a position.

So if we critizise people who professionally lobby for stricter climate measures, I fear we should show them how to do it better or remain silent. Armchair experts and all that jazz.

I'm pretty sure the crew decided to fly back not because of her but because they wanted.

It's the same reasoning of the classic "you defend socialism yet you buy products made under capitalism, oh my what a hypocrite".

Set a personal example.

I respect Ed Begley a lot for adopting a small carbon footprint lifestyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Begley_Jr.#Environmental, house tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV3uedeCKj4

It's much more inspiring than just talking about it while polluting more than the average person.

We saw this 15 years ago with Al Gore, too. Who cares if he's right, he lives in a big house!

Engaging intellectually with the other side is inefficient. You can get more upvotes with less effort with humorous personal attacks against them.

For example: Donald Drumpf, amiright? Who the hell buys a gold-plated toilet? Tiny hands. Sad.

Dashing out a comment like that is far quicker than analysing the impact of subsidies and protectionist policies on the American manufacturing and agricultural industries - and easier for people to engage with to boot.

Many people tend to not respond well to pedantic know-it alls pointing their finger, even more so when it's some teenager lecturing the grown ups, even more so when their "grassroots" rise was manufactured by media/ad agency parents and their friends...

The mechanism is simple: What Greta does, feels to them like she is holding a mirror in front of their faces. They hate what they see. They cannot bring what they see together with their self-image. So instead of going to the bottom of their own feelings and exploring why that girl enrages them so much, they rationalize it: "she isn't a real environmentalist, because she didn't do X or Y propperly" etc.

The world however still thinks she is on the right side of history and then they realize that just rationalizing it to themselves won't cut it. So they open the browser, log in, ...

To their defense: most probably don't even realize it works that way. Many men are quite bad at understanding their own feelings because they never learned how to do it. But sadly lying to themselves will likely make it worse..

Al Gore was neither young, a girl, nor autistic, but he received a similar response. And still does, in fact, even after years out of the spotlight. Perhaps this has nothing to do with her and is simply disagreement over the issue.

Gore did have the same message. His predictions of imminent apocalypse were wrong, and many of us old enough to remember that are naturally skeptical about the latest batch of apocalyptic predictions.

And the venom? That exists on the fringes of any political issue, and advocates amplify the voices of a few loudmouthed fools to discredit any reasoned disagreement. The perception of widespread hate is manufactured.

These are merely multipliers, not in it self constituting the whole impact. What had more impact was the record drought throughout Europe that happend when she started her thing. Even the most critical people at that time realized that the weather was doing something that it usually didn't do.

I am not an American and Al Gore is not as widely perceived here as in the US I suppose (also because the whole climate thing is not such a polarizing issue over here).

> The perception of widespread hate is manufactured.

Is it really? I didn't see such strong reactions against a single person for a long time. Middle aged men setting posers of a 16 year old girl on fire on the street. I mean really – how is that normal?

I haven't heard about that (and can't find it). How many people were burning posters? If it was just a few, that's another example of the amplification I mentioned. A few crazy people are elevated as representative of the opposition.

The Washington Post ran a story like that. "Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is sailing to America amid a storm of online attacks"[1]. Their evidence for that "storm"? Three tweets.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/15/swedish-clim...

But beyond that the amount of such voices I wittnessed in my feeds also isn't too small and I neither followed Greta Thunberg nor do I have many environmentalists in my feeds.

Literally every news article daring to mentioning her had 40-50+ "critical" voices with a perceived majority of men that could have been her father.

So all of what I say here is obviously very subjective and I am convinced that you are right, when you speak of a loud minority. What fascinated me is how middle aged men go and under their real name rant about a 16 year old girl and still feel like they are doing the right thing. And I don't mean trolls, I mean guys that really do think this is what they need to do.

Myself I didn't really deal with Greta Thunberg. I think it is nice that she creates attention for this important topic, espcially among audiences who wouldn't be reached by pure scientific publications, but personally I am not that interested in what she says, because her points are mostly moral and ethical and I agree with the general idea that we need to drastically change things even if it hurts.

People don't like being talked down to.

That's a fact you have to take into account when you want to persuade them. If you ignore basic facts about human psychology, be prepared to suffer the consequences.

I'm not sure about the hate. She is a young girl who is passionate about the climate. Great!

But because she is a young person, she is being used by activists as cover and a mouthpiece for their views, because you can't criticize a 16 year old for the reason you demonstrated - you get called out for being mean to a young person.

Also, 16 year olds are not a good resource for setting complicated geo-political policies. They just aren't. They have a very shallow and superficial understanding of the issues because they have no life, professional or academic experience .. which is why they make a good vessels for dishonest activists.

For example, if carbon emissions are as terrible as IPCC report makes them out to be, nuclear energy HAS to be on the table as the primary driver for decommissioning coal and natural gas plants. But she's against it because older dishonest activists are against it and she's parroting their views that we can cut emissions without nuclear.

>She's got this highly logical, consequential way of thinking that I've only seen in much older, highly successful people before.

She's 16. Don't project things you want to be true.

>What's so terrible about that?

Nothing. But she's also not saying anything new. Everyone sees the IPCC numbers.