>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).