A debate for the decade...

Not since Joan of Arc has a young woman proven so divisive. Greta Thunberg is the darling of the media, and the protest culture, but like gold, is she really all that glitters?

The daughter of Swedish actor, Svante Thunberg, and operatic star Malena Ernman, she was born in that hotbed of liberalism, Stockholm, in 2003, so even now is still a babe in the woods. As a 15-year-old she was incredibly busy, as reputedly, not only did she ‘force’ her parents to renounce flying as a means of travel, but also to become vegan, among other lifestyle changes in support of her climate change beliefs.

She also withdrew from school, citing her climate beliefs as more important than her truancy, and to enhance her profile picketed parliament for three weeks. The tail wagging the dog maybe? Or weak parenting? Or someone seeing an opportunity? Or did her barely rational fears grasp her so dramatically, and did her parents truly identify her passion, not care, or abdicate their responsibilities, as parents.

In any case, Thunberg drew even more attention to herself when confronted by the media she fought her way front and centre as the group’s spokesperson, and her first words were to encourage all those present to use their mobile phones to record and share her words. That’s one positive aspect of autism which she was diagnosed with at some unspecified time, it brings a significant amount of focus, and can embolden one, removing any hesitancy. In fact, Thunberg herself has referred to it as her superpower!

But, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and high expectations, how else could a teenager, without a smile, or a deferential gesture, berate the United Nations, in September 2019, ”People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”

It was pure theatre, and Mum and Dad would have been so proud! A cautionary perspective was raised by political commentator Andrew Bolt wrote of Thunberg being, “So young, and with so many mental issues, and “chronically attracted to apocalyptic visions, fearful, anxious and disturbed.” And she is no hysterical child, no weirdo, no medieval witch! In fact, she appears to be anything but, though more in the way that the London Times writes of her as “a child of woke capitalism,” a dupe for the Swedish energy sector that stands to make billions for energy titans in Sweden and Europe. She could yet prove a poster child for the manipulation of her youthful, impressionable generation.

This wealth of green lobbyists, PR hustlers, eco-academics and think tanks have their own agenda, and ironically, its one that Thunberg’s activities benefit immeasurably as the energy sector has prepared for green energies to deliver on the most significant contracts ever signed across Europe. Has ‘Team Thunberg proven a windfall for one of the greatest hustles ever imagined? I fear so, and that the cracks are showing. On November 23, the now 21-year-old Thunberg chanted “Crush Zionism” at a Pro-Palestinian protest in Stockholm, surely alienating much of her support, and providing grist to the mill of her detractors, by appearing as a serial protester, diluting her environmental message.

However, it is not emotion, or entitlement, that are her greatest challenge now, as reliant upon what she wants the world to see, it is now the turn of science to fight back. Geophysicist John Bruyn says that for the last 7.5 millennia since the peak Holocene temperatures, the planet Earth has been warming and cooling slowly due to the Milankovic cycles of the Earth’s orbital elements, as a pre-cursor to believe it or not, a new, coming, ice-age, and he’s not the only one.

The American Meteorological Society “does not agree.” Nobel Prize winner John Clauser says, “There is no climate crisis.” Professor Bob Carter says, “Climate is always changing – change is what climate does.” Michael E Mann says, “The tide may be turning.” The science says that global temperature is nothing more than a natural cyclical process.

What do you think?