How dare you!
...climate activist Greta Thunberg, only 16, cried out almost in tears as she gave a speech at the UN Climate Action Summit on Monday.
We’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
...in case you are wondering, world leaders were all present hearing her speech. Some applauded. Some kept quiet. Some nodded. Others avoided eye contact, pensive about their investments worldwide.
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet, I’m one of the lucky ones.
...fyi, President Donald Trump was there too. It reported that he had made a brief stop, just 15 minutes. He was on his way to a forum on religious freedom. Here is his sarcastic tweets on Greta’s speech: -
“She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”
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 fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
Well, that about sums up the polarity of the debate. On one side, we have countries like Saudi Arabia, Australia and US led by the inimical Trump who once called climate change a “hoax”.
And on the other side, where Greta is fighting for, that is, for our children’s future, for hers, are countries like China, Germany, France and even India, trying their darnest to keep the average global temperature below the Paris accords target at 1.5 deg C.
Currently, we are moving towards 1.3 deg C. The gloomy forecast is that it will hit 1.3 deg C. in five years. The point is to limit the temperature at 1.5 deg C. and this would “prevent severe climate change impact and limit sea-level rise.”
The stark reality is, as it stands now, global warming and pollution “are ravaging the earth’s oceans and icy regions in ways that could unleash misery on a global scale...the observed and projected impact includes vanishing glaciers and expanding marine heatwaves, leading to an irreversible sea-level rise that could eventually displace hundreds of millions of people...”
So, does Greta’s urgent and desperate message have a point? And how do you receive public snubs (or condescending tweets) from the leader of the free world whose boardroom and situation room talk are mainly about money and the fairy tales of eternal economic growth?
Alas, the irony is that the word “trump” may mean some form of victory secured, but it is definitely not a victory over our human nature, that is, a nature that only seeks to profit self over others.
It is on the contrary a victory of self, a celebrative chant for self-aggrandisement at the expense of a world inching towards mass extinction. And that is how polarised the world stands today where the pursuit of profit has no limits, and those who have the responsibility and power to do something about it is scarce to even act, not to mention take the stand forward to be counted.
But Greta is not done yet. As young as she is, she saw through our hypocrisy, our double mindedness. Sometimes, a child embodies more sense and purpose than a corporate honcho sitting regally in his high rise office or the head of a nation overlooking with self-conceit from the seat of power and authority.
This is what she has to say...
You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
Alas, I believe that Martin Luther King was right when towards the end of his life, he realised that there is a deeper problem of value under capitalism. He believed that it is not just about reforming policies, but more relevantly, our consciousness.
For capital gains will always struggle with the common good in a bid to redistribute wealth, because greed is valorised in a system driven by the market, which is held spellbound by the promise of “the winner shall take all”.
Everyone wants to be a winner, that is, to trump others, and in its blind pursuit, the trail of destruction - whilst taking our climate and earth with it as its final ”jericho-shout” ambition - is all the evidence we need to harken to the cry of a young girl’s broken heart.
So, the last word here is the voice of unembellished reason. It is also our last call to board before human nature effectively takes over Mother Nature and unwittingly (or with careless abandonment) ravages her in the name of progress.
...You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
Ps: scripturally speaking, the unpardonable sin may just be to allow our greed to take the earth and the future of our children down with it.
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