What do you think?
Rate this book
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference
The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations
In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.
In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.
112 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 2019
About the author
Greta Thunberg
24 books967 followersGreta Thunberg is a Swedish climate activist who, as a schoolgirl at age 15, began protesting outside the Swedish parliament about the need for immediate action to combat climate change. She has since become an outspoken and world famous climate activist.
She is known for having initiated the school strike for climate movement that formed in November 2018 and surged globally after the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in December the same year. Her personal activism began in August 2018, when her recurring and solitary Skolstrejk för klimatet ("School strike for the climate") protesting outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm began attracting media coverage, even though Sweden has already enacted "the most ambitious climate law in the world" – to be carbon neutral by 2045.
On 15 March 2019, an estimated 1.4 million students in 112 countries around the world joined her call in striking and protesting. A similar event involving students from 125 countries took place on 24 May 2019.
Thunberg has received various prizes and awards for her activism. In March 2019, three members of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. In May 2019, at the age of 16, she featured on the cover of Time magazine. Some media have described her impact on the world stage as the Greta Thunberg effect.
Source: Wikipedia
She is known for having initiated the school strike for climate movement that formed in November 2018 and surged globally after the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in December the same year. Her personal activism began in August 2018, when her recurring and solitary Skolstrejk för klimatet ("School strike for the climate") protesting outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm began attracting media coverage, even though Sweden has already enacted "the most ambitious climate law in the world" – to be carbon neutral by 2045.
On 15 March 2019, an estimated 1.4 million students in 112 countries around the world joined her call in striking and protesting. A similar event involving students from 125 countries took place on 24 May 2019.
Thunberg has received various prizes and awards for her activism. In March 2019, three members of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. In May 2019, at the age of 16, she featured on the cover of Time magazine. Some media have described her impact on the world stage as the Greta Thunberg effect.
Source: Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,520 reviews
Read
August 15, 2020get em, greta
January 1, 2020
‘some people say that i should study to become a climate scientist so that i can “solve the climate crisis.” but the climate crisis has already been solved. we already have all the facts and solutions. all we have to do is to wake up and change.’
continuing my tradition of starting off the new year with some words of action and much needed inspiration (see last year).
i heard about greta thunberg so much towards the end of last year, but i never watched or read any of her speeches. i shouldnt be so surprised that someone so young can radiate such passion for an important cause.
what i really like is the consistent message across all of her speeches, which is that she understands the importance of not waiting for political action to fight against the climate crisis. yes, changing policy is important on a global level, but we can also make a difference locally and in our personal lives. this article lists many small ways we can alter our lifestyle in order to live in a more eco-friendly manner. i definitely will be implementing these suggestions to my own living this year.
so heres to 2020, a new year, a new decade, where we can choose to make a difference, protect our planet, and ensure our home is around/habitable for future generations to come.
PS - for those interested, here are links to the text and video of her speech at the UN climate change conference.
↠ 4.5 stars
continuing my tradition of starting off the new year with some words of action and much needed inspiration (see last year).
i heard about greta thunberg so much towards the end of last year, but i never watched or read any of her speeches. i shouldnt be so surprised that someone so young can radiate such passion for an important cause.
what i really like is the consistent message across all of her speeches, which is that she understands the importance of not waiting for political action to fight against the climate crisis. yes, changing policy is important on a global level, but we can also make a difference locally and in our personal lives. this article lists many small ways we can alter our lifestyle in order to live in a more eco-friendly manner. i definitely will be implementing these suggestions to my own living this year.
so heres to 2020, a new year, a new decade, where we can choose to make a difference, protect our planet, and ensure our home is around/habitable for future generations to come.
PS - for those interested, here are links to the text and video of her speech at the UN climate change conference.
↠ 4.5 stars
April 13, 2021
My review got posted on Plant Based News - the world's leading website for vegan news, exciting times!
“Homo Sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands.”
It’s been a long time since I felt any hope. Year in year out we seem to only get worse as a species. More and more incompetent leaders are elected into positions of power and we push the planet further and further to collapse and nothing seems to give; yet, these words give me hope. Greta Thunberg gives me hope.
And that’s important. The future has not yet been written and there is time enough to prevent the chaos that is coming our way. Greta Thunberg is an inspiring activist, a leader and a voice the world so desperately needs. This book collects her speeches to date, and they are all very powerful and convincing. She wants us to panic more than she wants us to feel hope; she wants us to recognise what is happening so we can act and prevent anymore destruction. We need to wise up and take greater responsibility for our actions. We need to become vegans and minimise our environmental impact. We need to start caring.
Language is so important, calling what we face by its true name is the key. This is the strongest element of her rhetoric; her simple and mature ability to rationalise and address the problem at hand: the environmental crisis. Because that’s exactly what we face. She has called adults out on their irresponsibility and complete lack of foresight at the European Economic Social Committee earlier on this year, calling those in attendance irresponsible children. Her words work towards shaming our so-called leaders and governments that are tasked with protecting the welfare of their nations. But what’s the point if none of these nations have a future?
It takes the words of a child (the words of the future generation) to get people to listen and they certainly have had a rippling effect on an international level. She’s been nominated for the noble peace prize this year and if she won, she’d be the first vegan to do so which would be a tremendous victory for the movement. I think she really deserves it for the interest and attention her words have given the environmental crisis we face. She has a striking ability to get to the heart of the matter and is without a doubt one of the most influential people of the 21st century. I also love how she embraces her Asperger’s and celebrates the strengths it has granted her, calling it a gift rather than a hindrance. In my experience, autistics are always remarkable people.
So, this is a great little book full of encouraging words and hope, hope that this planet will one day have a future if the world listens and starts caring. Greta Thunberg does, indeed, prove the sentiment her book title evokes: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree
__________________________________
“Homo Sapiens have not yet failed. Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands.”
It’s been a long time since I felt any hope. Year in year out we seem to only get worse as a species. More and more incompetent leaders are elected into positions of power and we push the planet further and further to collapse and nothing seems to give; yet, these words give me hope. Greta Thunberg gives me hope.
And that’s important. The future has not yet been written and there is time enough to prevent the chaos that is coming our way. Greta Thunberg is an inspiring activist, a leader and a voice the world so desperately needs. This book collects her speeches to date, and they are all very powerful and convincing. She wants us to panic more than she wants us to feel hope; she wants us to recognise what is happening so we can act and prevent anymore destruction. We need to wise up and take greater responsibility for our actions. We need to become vegans and minimise our environmental impact. We need to start caring.
Language is so important, calling what we face by its true name is the key. This is the strongest element of her rhetoric; her simple and mature ability to rationalise and address the problem at hand: the environmental crisis. Because that’s exactly what we face. She has called adults out on their irresponsibility and complete lack of foresight at the European Economic Social Committee earlier on this year, calling those in attendance irresponsible children. Her words work towards shaming our so-called leaders and governments that are tasked with protecting the welfare of their nations. But what’s the point if none of these nations have a future?
It takes the words of a child (the words of the future generation) to get people to listen and they certainly have had a rippling effect on an international level. She’s been nominated for the noble peace prize this year and if she won, she’d be the first vegan to do so which would be a tremendous victory for the movement. I think she really deserves it for the interest and attention her words have given the environmental crisis we face. She has a striking ability to get to the heart of the matter and is without a doubt one of the most influential people of the 21st century. I also love how she embraces her Asperger’s and celebrates the strengths it has granted her, calling it a gift rather than a hindrance. In my experience, autistics are always remarkable people.
So, this is a great little book full of encouraging words and hope, hope that this planet will one day have a future if the world listens and starts caring. Greta Thunberg does, indeed, prove the sentiment her book title evokes: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree
__________________________________
December 24, 2019
Not impressed.
Rating. We start at 5 stars:
+6 stars: I give it an extra star for the author's devotion to nature (+1 star), young age (+1 star), determination (+1 star), mental illness (+1 star), another +1 star so that she wouldn't cry (or sulk or whatever she does to terrorize her parents) and for everything else that I couldn't give a damn to care to remember or list (+1 star).
-1 star for repetitiveness
-1 star for no solutions suggested
-1 star for boring writing, as she isn't 8 to write so simply.
-1 star for further polluting the world with creating more trash during her protests, using that ludicrous boat to travel (with 2 sailor teams that fly to and fro) and trains and everything.
-1 star for lies: Q: This is not a political text. (c) Of-freaking-course it is.
-1 star for this alleged book not being a book but a pamphlet with some rants.
-1 star for preaching to the choir. We know that all of this is going to hell in a handbasket. We just don't know how to stop it.
-1 star for wrongly stating that we have all solutions today. And at another point rambling about 'thinking cathedrally'. We don't have all the necessary solutions in place and we are already quite 'cathedral-thinking', thank you so much.
-1 star for wrongly choosing the auditory. The influencers and politicians and random public are not the people that actually can do something. It's not about Trump being difficult or Merkel being lazy or some influencer evangelist Nico or Mary or whoever from I don't care where influencing people about lipstick and shoes instead of climate change. It's the scientists who should catch the ball, not about being alarmist but rather about having solutions. We don't have all the necessary tech (clean energy, wasteless processes, zero footprint food, etc) invented and implemented. Almost nothing today is zero carbon footprint no matter what the scientists might claim.
-1 star for being illiterate and subjecting public to her illiterate rants about stuff way above Greta's very limited skills. Going to school and getting some education to be able to actually do something useful might be a way to remedy this: how about inventing some new energy sources (clean and applicable everywhere!), Greta?
The end result is 1 star. Which, frankly, is very generous for this original-ish but pointless rant collection.
Q:
Last summer, climate scientist Johan Rockström and some other people wrote that we have at most three years to reverse growth in greenhouse-gas emissions if we’re going to reach the goals set in the Paris Agreement.
Over a year and two months have now passed, and in that time many other scientists have said the same thing and a lot of things have got worse and greenhouse-gas emissions continue to increase. So maybe we have even less time than the one year and ten months Johan Rockström said we have left.
If people knew this they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m so ‘passionate about climate change’.
If people knew that the scientists say that we have a 5 per cent chance of meeting the Paris target, and if people knew what a nightmare scenario we will face if we don’t keep global warming below 2°C, they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m on school strike outside parliament. (c) People know that, Greta. They aren't illiterate dolts, unlike what you think.
Q:
Because if everyone knew how serious the situation is and how little is actually being done, everyone would come and sit down beside us. (c) Right. Because so many things are solved by sitting down in the middle of the street. I'm kidding. Spoiler: they never are. You have to get your ass up and do things: invent cleaner energy and implement it afterwards, everywhere. Have fun (not!)
Q:
When I was about eight years old, I first heard about something called climate change, or global warming. (c) You shouldn't have stopped developing your skills at that point. Today you would've been able to make sense and maybe some impact. In 2 years you'll be 18, adult and no one will think you cutesy anymore. They'll just relabel you to, well, problematic and will be done with you.
Q:
I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. (c) There are no normal people. Whatever spectrum or neuromake-up.
Q:
If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. (c) No shit Sherlock! How? How would you effing live without the computer you printed this BS on, without shoes you wear, without sandwitches you eat, without trains and boats and planes and cars and everything you use to move from point A to point B, without the meds that help you (or not)... Try growing some grain to make it into bread and you'll see what's wrong with this idea and why it's so stupid.
Q:
Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. ...
Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t. (c) We aren't much of a civilization, frankly. If an illiterate teen is made into some saint maybe we should just stop existing and pave the way to some more intellectually developed civilisation? I say either Greta goes to school, finally, or we don't. How about that? Civilization strike, anyone?
Q:
Are we evil?
No, of course not. (c) Of course we are. Don't kid yourself.
Q:
No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. ...
I don’t want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. (c) So, we are supposed to act like we are in some crisis? Like, scream and run randomly about doing nothing? Is that the illustrious course of action we are supposed to undertake?
Q:
Even most green politicians and climate scientists go on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy. (c) Even your sailors do.
Q:
Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved.
We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change. (c)Optimistic much. You're misinformed, Greta. Go learn some Georgaphy and Economics and Physics. There are no viable generally applicable solutions.
Q:
But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we all could do together if we wanted to. (c) Get a billion of headlines or what?
Q:
The real power belongs to the people. (c) Too bad it's not brainpower.
Q:
We know that most politicians don’t want to talk to us. Good, we don’t want to talk to them either. We want them to talk to the scientists instead. (c) Finally. Some practioners needed not theoreticians. You basically need to change everything in our economies. And you don't need to talk about climate. You need to talk about how our billions of people can live without changing it. There's the rub.
Q:
I write my own speeches... I often ask for input. I also have a few scientists that I frequently ask for help on how to express certain complicated matters. (c) Uh-huh. So large chunks of this stuff are what adults tell her.
Q:
During the last six months I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it... (c) Actually, people are. It would have been more nature-oriented not to do that.
Q:
We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. (c) Go and create a better one. Be my guest.
Q:
Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling. (c)
That's a very bad analogy.
York Minster Cathedral? 252 years to build?
Sagrada Famiglia? Work in progress since 1882?
If so, we are doing just fine with the climate, relax? We are thinking quite cathedrally already, stumbling about at random.
Rating. We start at 5 stars:
+6 stars: I give it an extra star for the author's devotion to nature (+1 star), young age (+1 star), determination (+1 star), mental illness (+1 star), another +1 star so that she wouldn't cry (or sulk or whatever she does to terrorize her parents) and for everything else that I couldn't give a damn to care to remember or list (+1 star).
-1 star for repetitiveness
-1 star for no solutions suggested
-1 star for boring writing, as she isn't 8 to write so simply.
-1 star for further polluting the world with creating more trash during her protests, using that ludicrous boat to travel (with 2 sailor teams that fly to and fro) and trains and everything.
-1 star for lies: Q: This is not a political text. (c) Of-freaking-course it is.
-1 star for this alleged book not being a book but a pamphlet with some rants.
-1 star for preaching to the choir. We know that all of this is going to hell in a handbasket. We just don't know how to stop it.
-1 star for wrongly stating that we have all solutions today. And at another point rambling about 'thinking cathedrally'. We don't have all the necessary solutions in place and we are already quite 'cathedral-thinking', thank you so much.
-1 star for wrongly choosing the auditory. The influencers and politicians and random public are not the people that actually can do something. It's not about Trump being difficult or Merkel being lazy or some influencer evangelist Nico or Mary or whoever from I don't care where influencing people about lipstick and shoes instead of climate change. It's the scientists who should catch the ball, not about being alarmist but rather about having solutions. We don't have all the necessary tech (clean energy, wasteless processes, zero footprint food, etc) invented and implemented. Almost nothing today is zero carbon footprint no matter what the scientists might claim.
-1 star for being illiterate and subjecting public to her illiterate rants about stuff way above Greta's very limited skills. Going to school and getting some education to be able to actually do something useful might be a way to remedy this: how about inventing some new energy sources (clean and applicable everywhere!), Greta?
The end result is 1 star. Which, frankly, is very generous for this original-ish but pointless rant collection.
Q:
Last summer, climate scientist Johan Rockström and some other people wrote that we have at most three years to reverse growth in greenhouse-gas emissions if we’re going to reach the goals set in the Paris Agreement.
Over a year and two months have now passed, and in that time many other scientists have said the same thing and a lot of things have got worse and greenhouse-gas emissions continue to increase. So maybe we have even less time than the one year and ten months Johan Rockström said we have left.
If people knew this they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m so ‘passionate about climate change’.
If people knew that the scientists say that we have a 5 per cent chance of meeting the Paris target, and if people knew what a nightmare scenario we will face if we don’t keep global warming below 2°C, they wouldn’t need to ask me why I’m on school strike outside parliament. (c) People know that, Greta. They aren't illiterate dolts, unlike what you think.
Q:
Because if everyone knew how serious the situation is and how little is actually being done, everyone would come and sit down beside us. (c) Right. Because so many things are solved by sitting down in the middle of the street. I'm kidding. Spoiler: they never are. You have to get your ass up and do things: invent cleaner energy and implement it afterwards, everywhere. Have fun (not!)
Q:
When I was about eight years old, I first heard about something called climate change, or global warming. (c) You shouldn't have stopped developing your skills at that point. Today you would've been able to make sense and maybe some impact. In 2 years you'll be 18, adult and no one will think you cutesy anymore. They'll just relabel you to, well, problematic and will be done with you.
Q:
I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. (c) There are no normal people. Whatever spectrum or neuromake-up.
Q:
If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. (c) No shit Sherlock! How? How would you effing live without the computer you printed this BS on, without shoes you wear, without sandwitches you eat, without trains and boats and planes and cars and everything you use to move from point A to point B, without the meds that help you (or not)... Try growing some grain to make it into bread and you'll see what's wrong with this idea and why it's so stupid.
Q:
Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. ...
Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t. (c) We aren't much of a civilization, frankly. If an illiterate teen is made into some saint maybe we should just stop existing and pave the way to some more intellectually developed civilisation? I say either Greta goes to school, finally, or we don't. How about that? Civilization strike, anyone?
Q:
Are we evil?
No, of course not. (c) Of course we are. Don't kid yourself.
Q:
No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. ...
I don’t want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. (c) So, we are supposed to act like we are in some crisis? Like, scream and run randomly about doing nothing? Is that the illustrious course of action we are supposed to undertake?
Q:
Even most green politicians and climate scientists go on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy. (c) Even your sailors do.
Q:
Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved.
We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change. (c)Optimistic much. You're misinformed, Greta. Go learn some Georgaphy and Economics and Physics. There are no viable generally applicable solutions.
Q:
But I think that if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we all could do together if we wanted to. (c) Get a billion of headlines or what?
Q:
The real power belongs to the people. (c) Too bad it's not brainpower.
Q:
We know that most politicians don’t want to talk to us. Good, we don’t want to talk to them either. We want them to talk to the scientists instead. (c) Finally. Some practioners needed not theoreticians. You basically need to change everything in our economies. And you don't need to talk about climate. You need to talk about how our billions of people can live without changing it. There's the rub.
Q:
I write my own speeches... I often ask for input. I also have a few scientists that I frequently ask for help on how to express certain complicated matters. (c) Uh-huh. So large chunks of this stuff are what adults tell her.
Q:
During the last six months I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it... (c) Actually, people are. It would have been more nature-oriented not to do that.
Q:
We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. (c) Go and create a better one. Be my guest.
Q:
Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling. (c)
That's a very bad analogy.
York Minster Cathedral? 252 years to build?
Sagrada Famiglia? Work in progress since 1882?
If so, we are doing just fine with the climate, relax? We are thinking quite cathedrally already, stumbling about at random.
December 26, 2022
Greta Thunberg is a young climate activist from Sweden. Her protest against climate change by not going to school gathered global attention in 2018. She was even nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.
This book contains her collection of speeches. She is the perfect example for everyone that a single person can make a huge impact to change the world in the best possible way.
October 9, 2019
*Unpopular opinion alert* I absolutely hated this little book.
It is a collection of Greta’s speeches, but they are all extremely dull to read, and various paragraphs are repeated over and over in different speeches. This does not mean I find her uninspiring or that I don’t believe in climate change, I 1000% do! But this book is absolutely not the way to go if you want to convince people of your cause. There is background info missing, which I guess you wouldn’t have time to explain during a speech, but since this is a book it would have made it much more interesting if we got more background info on the claims she is making, and the locations/background info on the speeches themselves, e.g. telling the readers a little about the situation and why she was going to speech at a certain location and why that day etc.
I don’t recommend this book at all. Don’t give this to climate skeptics and don’t give this to people that are on the fence, this will not convince them of the realness or the urgency of the problem unfortunately.
It is a collection of Greta’s speeches, but they are all extremely dull to read, and various paragraphs are repeated over and over in different speeches. This does not mean I find her uninspiring or that I don’t believe in climate change, I 1000% do! But this book is absolutely not the way to go if you want to convince people of your cause. There is background info missing, which I guess you wouldn’t have time to explain during a speech, but since this is a book it would have made it much more interesting if we got more background info on the claims she is making, and the locations/background info on the speeches themselves, e.g. telling the readers a little about the situation and why she was going to speech at a certain location and why that day etc.
I don’t recommend this book at all. Don’t give this to climate skeptics and don’t give this to people that are on the fence, this will not convince them of the realness or the urgency of the problem unfortunately.
December 29, 2019
To have achieved more in this age than others in one's life speaks for itself. And an ode to "haters gonna hate".
It can not be put into words how great this movement is. Nobody has so far been able to positively mobilize the youth of the 21st century to such an extent. Spotlighting the topics of climate change, environmental degradation and the stupidity of the economy, as trivialized by the leading media. To describe the positive could fill volumes.
But now to the haters, who unfortunately still have not learned or understood anything crucial.
The cheap methodology used by civil trolls or trolls who elected trolls against Fridays for future is ridiculous and abject. Similar tendencies come from the camps of resigned, frustrated, dissatisfied conservatives. They do not like activism, enthusiasm or the smallest amount change. Ugh, that's terrible for them. So they say things like:
()= inner view
She is too young and politicians have acquired their offices through competence.
She would enrich herself and be a puppet of her parents.
She would be too cheeky and presumptuous toward authorities.
She does not write the speeches alone.
She is so dedicated and full of life. (I, on the other hand, am bitter, internally dead and therefore jealous, but I do not want to admit that, so I hate it.)
She uses mass transit.
She is a woman. (And I'm a misogynist, but I'm not allowed to live it out anymore like in the good old times, just like my homophobia, Islamophobia, ... stupid liberal, progressive, '*+#)
She talks about complex things that I do not understand. (I would have to make an effort, learn and read, to understand, to revise my worldview.)
Etc.
What differentiated and substantiated criticism.
Funny that these are the same people who refuse bitter truths as conspiracy theories. They are so castrated in their thinking that they barely notice anything happening around them, let alone in the world. But when it comes to ranting against a dedicated icon of teenagers, spraying hatred against a young woman, they are great and big and strong. They crawl in front of their political icons and ideologies, but against Greta, they suddenly dare to open their mouth.
And look at their change of heart. First, they rant about the indifferent, just consuming, dumb youth, those smombies with their devices. Their own voting behavior is to copy what mommy, daddy and the coworkers choose, but ok. As soon as the youth begins to put their finger into the sore, stinking sepsis of a wound inflicted on the planet with the help of their ignorance, the joviality mode is activated. "Pat, Pat. Don´t rack your hollow brains full of fake news, do not fill them with the lies of Nobel laureates (except economics), scientists and leading luminaries, fill them with mass media as we do. What does the FOX say?"
As always, revolutions begin when youth begins to be interested in politics. Fortunately, the classic indoctrination mantra, "Give them to us when they are still young and we have them forever." gets a positive connotation in the present ago. Not one of the moronic ideologies of the past, but a movement focused on science, humanism and sustainability. Instead of blind obedience, absurd statutes and pseudo-sciences such as economics, participation in lived democracy, freedom to participate and a foundation of genuine, hard science.
It is invaluable how many people is given hope and confidence for a better future by Greta and Fridays for future. That civil society has finally begun to rise up against the boundless ignorance, incompetence, stupidity, greed, corruption, etc. of politics. It would exceed the possible length for reviews several times to complete that list.
I would go so far as to say that her leitmotif goes beyond the ones of other worthy activists, human rights activists, environmentalists... Because the planet, the climate, the survivability in the future affects us all land not just a fragment of the whole. An important fragment for sure, but just a part. Because a young person managed to wake up an entire generation. It´s literally high time, but not too late to continue her consistent optimism.
And it's just the start, the beginning of something big, unprecedented. Thanks to the digital possibilities, everyone around the world can be part of it. So that all the strengths, competencies, interests and abilities of young cosmopolitans flow together. And that gives me optimism about the future, the only possible option unless one wants to sicken one's mind with the plumes of the dark side.
PS: Please economists, predicts the next crisis. An exact science can certainly extrapolate with a transparent, understandable, logical formula. Otherwise, Alfred Nobel would surely have opposed that you have a Nobel Prize at all ... Oh, he has and never wanted to have one. Did not think that was a real science and just dangerous charlatanry, did you know? The Nobel Prize for Economics came later, why oh why, funded by the Swedish Central Bank. Pleasant, likable guys like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman got it for their great, still perfect working concepts. Do you see it today everywhere? Neoliberalism, jay, sunshine and lollypops! Fully objective and impartial criteria for the awards too. As if actors awarded themselves for the Oscars. Or politicians medals to themselves. Or clergymen canonize themselves.
Dear children of economics, please become reasonable at last. Stop playing with the gross national product and throwing inflation and deflation at each other, that could hurt an eye! And then, when you are afraid and don´t know what to do, you run to the central bank. Behave like adults instead, it´s never too late to learn something substantial. Everyone is special, even you. And how sweet that you keep saying, "The market, deregulation.", all the time, it´s lovely. Please stand between the backlashers and political extremists, next to the religious fanatics, for the group photo. Well, smile now and say "Trickle-down theory". Thank you, and now inside the history books with you, swift, swift to the anachronisms.
The paradigm shift will sweep you away as an unfortunate footnote.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_...
It can not be put into words how great this movement is. Nobody has so far been able to positively mobilize the youth of the 21st century to such an extent. Spotlighting the topics of climate change, environmental degradation and the stupidity of the economy, as trivialized by the leading media. To describe the positive could fill volumes.
But now to the haters, who unfortunately still have not learned or understood anything crucial.
The cheap methodology used by civil trolls or trolls who elected trolls against Fridays for future is ridiculous and abject. Similar tendencies come from the camps of resigned, frustrated, dissatisfied conservatives. They do not like activism, enthusiasm or the smallest amount change. Ugh, that's terrible for them. So they say things like:
()= inner view
She is too young and politicians have acquired their offices through competence.
She would enrich herself and be a puppet of her parents.
She would be too cheeky and presumptuous toward authorities.
She does not write the speeches alone.
She is so dedicated and full of life. (I, on the other hand, am bitter, internally dead and therefore jealous, but I do not want to admit that, so I hate it.)
She uses mass transit.
She is a woman. (And I'm a misogynist, but I'm not allowed to live it out anymore like in the good old times, just like my homophobia, Islamophobia, ... stupid liberal, progressive, '*+#)
She talks about complex things that I do not understand. (I would have to make an effort, learn and read, to understand, to revise my worldview.)
Etc.
What differentiated and substantiated criticism.
Funny that these are the same people who refuse bitter truths as conspiracy theories. They are so castrated in their thinking that they barely notice anything happening around them, let alone in the world. But when it comes to ranting against a dedicated icon of teenagers, spraying hatred against a young woman, they are great and big and strong. They crawl in front of their political icons and ideologies, but against Greta, they suddenly dare to open their mouth.
And look at their change of heart. First, they rant about the indifferent, just consuming, dumb youth, those smombies with their devices. Their own voting behavior is to copy what mommy, daddy and the coworkers choose, but ok. As soon as the youth begins to put their finger into the sore, stinking sepsis of a wound inflicted on the planet with the help of their ignorance, the joviality mode is activated. "Pat, Pat. Don´t rack your hollow brains full of fake news, do not fill them with the lies of Nobel laureates (except economics), scientists and leading luminaries, fill them with mass media as we do. What does the FOX say?"
As always, revolutions begin when youth begins to be interested in politics. Fortunately, the classic indoctrination mantra, "Give them to us when they are still young and we have them forever." gets a positive connotation in the present ago. Not one of the moronic ideologies of the past, but a movement focused on science, humanism and sustainability. Instead of blind obedience, absurd statutes and pseudo-sciences such as economics, participation in lived democracy, freedom to participate and a foundation of genuine, hard science.
It is invaluable how many people is given hope and confidence for a better future by Greta and Fridays for future. That civil society has finally begun to rise up against the boundless ignorance, incompetence, stupidity, greed, corruption, etc. of politics. It would exceed the possible length for reviews several times to complete that list.
I would go so far as to say that her leitmotif goes beyond the ones of other worthy activists, human rights activists, environmentalists... Because the planet, the climate, the survivability in the future affects us all land not just a fragment of the whole. An important fragment for sure, but just a part. Because a young person managed to wake up an entire generation. It´s literally high time, but not too late to continue her consistent optimism.
And it's just the start, the beginning of something big, unprecedented. Thanks to the digital possibilities, everyone around the world can be part of it. So that all the strengths, competencies, interests and abilities of young cosmopolitans flow together. And that gives me optimism about the future, the only possible option unless one wants to sicken one's mind with the plumes of the dark side.
PS: Please economists, predicts the next crisis. An exact science can certainly extrapolate with a transparent, understandable, logical formula. Otherwise, Alfred Nobel would surely have opposed that you have a Nobel Prize at all ... Oh, he has and never wanted to have one. Did not think that was a real science and just dangerous charlatanry, did you know? The Nobel Prize for Economics came later, why oh why, funded by the Swedish Central Bank. Pleasant, likable guys like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman got it for their great, still perfect working concepts. Do you see it today everywhere? Neoliberalism, jay, sunshine and lollypops! Fully objective and impartial criteria for the awards too. As if actors awarded themselves for the Oscars. Or politicians medals to themselves. Or clergymen canonize themselves.
Dear children of economics, please become reasonable at last. Stop playing with the gross national product and throwing inflation and deflation at each other, that could hurt an eye! And then, when you are afraid and don´t know what to do, you run to the central bank. Behave like adults instead, it´s never too late to learn something substantial. Everyone is special, even you. And how sweet that you keep saying, "The market, deregulation.", all the time, it´s lovely. Please stand between the backlashers and political extremists, next to the religious fanatics, for the group photo. Well, smile now and say "Trickle-down theory". Thank you, and now inside the history books with you, swift, swift to the anachronisms.
The paradigm shift will sweep you away as an unfortunate footnote.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_...
August 22, 2019
I don't understand how people find it acceptable to publish a book with 10 identical speeches.
November 18, 2019
This book of speeches by Greta thundberg 16 year old climate actitivest is very thought provoking. It just goes to show that one voice does matter. No matter what side of the debate your on for climate change it is our children and their children who will suffer if somethings not done. They can say all they want about this young generation ,but one thing I admire about them is Their not afraid to stand up and make changes and though social media and YouTube they have a voice!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 6, 2019
Basically, in a world in which a great number of policy makers are loosing their marbles 16-year-old Greta Thunberg is demanding of those “world leaders” to finally listen to the crushing majority of scientists and start doing something reasonable before we loose the one blue marble our all lives depend on.
What the Fuck is wrong with that?
________
[Update 05 November 2019]
11,000+ scientists (and Greta) warn of ‘untold suffering’: World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
What the Fuck is wrong with that?
________
[Update 05 November 2019]
11,000+ scientists (and Greta) warn of ‘untold suffering’: World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency
An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis.
[...]
The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature's reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans. These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
August 30, 2022
This book is not a memoir, but a collection of Greta’s speeches throughout 2018-2019.
They are repetitive, slightly tailored to each audience. This was irritating at first, but the repetitiveness eventually added to the impact of her unwavering conviction to do something, to be active.
Yes, Greta Thunberg is a determined teenage activist. Good on her.
She faces down her critics, the climate-deniers, name-callers and bullies. Good on her.
Good on her for appearing to remain strong under the pressure of such nit-picking about her motives, or modes of transport. Yet, all this must come at some cost. I hope she remains strong.
‘She should be in school, not protesting.’ Yeah, right.
She’s telling us not to listen to her, but to the scientists, many times! She questions why the science is being ignored. She does this in a passionate way, and maybe that’s what scares her critics?
Following a year of severe weather events and disasters, I wonder what some of these hecklers would feel now? Certainly, governments are beginning to scramble.
A pocket-size book with a huge ‘ongoing’ message.
They are repetitive, slightly tailored to each audience. This was irritating at first, but the repetitiveness eventually added to the impact of her unwavering conviction to do something, to be active.
Yes, Greta Thunberg is a determined teenage activist. Good on her.
She faces down her critics, the climate-deniers, name-callers and bullies. Good on her.
Good on her for appearing to remain strong under the pressure of such nit-picking about her motives, or modes of transport. Yet, all this must come at some cost. I hope she remains strong.
‘She should be in school, not protesting.’ Yeah, right.
She’s telling us not to listen to her, but to the scientists, many times! She questions why the science is being ignored. She does this in a passionate way, and maybe that’s what scares her critics?
Following a year of severe weather events and disasters, I wonder what some of these hecklers would feel now? Certainly, governments are beginning to scramble.
A pocket-size book with a huge ‘ongoing’ message.
October 8, 2019
"We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.
To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself.
Your silence is almost worst of all.
The future of all the coming generations rests on your shoulders.
Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.
So please, treat the climate crisis like the acute crisis it is and give us a future.
Our lives are in your hands."
To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself.
Your silence is almost worst of all.
The future of all the coming generations rests on your shoulders.
Those of us who are still children can’t change what you do now once we’re old enough to do something about it.
So please, treat the climate crisis like the acute crisis it is and give us a future.
Our lives are in your hands."
May 29, 2019
What a feat. Bit repetitive but then so is governments' continuation of ignorance and dismissal.
September 25, 2019
Hej Greta,
Jag gillade din bok - sträckläste den på ca en halvtimme. Fantastiskt att du redan fått så mycket uppmärksamhet. Men som du säger, så räcker det inte med uppmärksamhet och snälla ord. Du vill att beslutsfattarna ska göra nåt konkret. Det gör de inte.
Det är tyvärr mycket enkelt. De här människorna är för det mesta gamla och rika. De räknar utifrån att det inte är deras problem. Innan klimatet kollapsar helt, så hinner de lugnt avslutar sina dagar i den trygga omgivningen som deras pengar fortfarande kan köpa. Du säger att din generation aldrig kommer att förlåta dem. De rycker på axlarna. De kommer att vara borta, det spelar ingen roll om ni förlåter dem eller ej.
Ni har som sagt gjort en bra början, men jag tror det behövs en aningen mera omedelbar insats. Har du läst J.G. Ballards lilla roman Running Wild? Vem vet, den kanske ger dig några idéer.
mvh,
Manny
Jag gillade din bok - sträckläste den på ca en halvtimme. Fantastiskt att du redan fått så mycket uppmärksamhet. Men som du säger, så räcker det inte med uppmärksamhet och snälla ord. Du vill att beslutsfattarna ska göra nåt konkret. Det gör de inte.
Det är tyvärr mycket enkelt. De här människorna är för det mesta gamla och rika. De räknar utifrån att det inte är deras problem. Innan klimatet kollapsar helt, så hinner de lugnt avslutar sina dagar i den trygga omgivningen som deras pengar fortfarande kan köpa. Du säger att din generation aldrig kommer att förlåta dem. De rycker på axlarna. De kommer att vara borta, det spelar ingen roll om ni förlåter dem eller ej.
Ni har som sagt gjort en bra början, men jag tror det behövs en aningen mera omedelbar insats. Har du läst J.G. Ballards lilla roman Running Wild? Vem vet, den kanske ger dig några idéer.
mvh,
Manny
January 2, 2020
How you feel about this book is entirely going to depend on what you're expecting to get out of it. This is not a scientific text, nor is it an in-depth exploration of possible solutions to climate change. This is a rallying cry; a wake-up call to anyone who isn't paying attention to the catastrophic state our planet is in. If you're familiar with Greta Thunberg from the news or social media, you'll pretty much know what to expect from this, and it does deliver.
That said, my god did the repetition in this short book start to grate. It actually rather irritates me how poorly curated this essay collection is; the impact of Thunberg's words starts to neuter itself the further you read, by no fault of her own but because the editor saw fit to include near-identical speeches back-to-back on several occasions.
That said, my god did the repetition in this short book start to grate. It actually rather irritates me how poorly curated this essay collection is; the impact of Thunberg's words starts to neuter itself the further you read, by no fault of her own but because the editor saw fit to include near-identical speeches back-to-back on several occasions.
June 18, 2020
Financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag.
There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.
This is quite a hard book to rate, especially as it's a collection of speeches and not something with a flowing consistent plot. There was a lot of repetition which makes sense in speeches but it really started to annoy me in book from making me think this was probably not the best way to put the message of the climate crisis across. The amount of times I heard 'our house is on fire' for example, did my head in a little.
My main issue with the book however is that it gave no solutions and just repeated the same message: 'stop releasing greenhouse gases.' There was nothing about what the average person can do to reduce their carbon emissions, something that would have been highly useful to read about instead of hearing over and over that it's the fault of large global companies and now future generations have to struggle with the damage they have left. The companies are not going to read this, so to me the speeches in book form seemed kind of pointless and boring at times if I'm honest, to get through. 'We must change almost everything in our current societies', and then she doesn't explain how. The why certainly comes across but she annoyingly explains no further. Instead of publishing speeches, an informative and practical book teaching people how to be more environmentally friendly would have been so much better. Do I see this book as a cash grab? Kind of, and it sucks.
At the beginning Greta states that her speeches are not political statements which they absolutely are. At around 30% she mentions the politics we need are currently non-existent and politicians don't care. Maybe don’t include politics if you said you wouldn’t..?
Don't you think that a 16 year old can speak for herself?
I think Greta is wonderful person including everyone who supports her. There were phrases like 'Aspergers is not a disease, it is a gift', that must be amazing for young people with disabilities to hear as it can inspire them to lead actual change with the many current issues we have in the world. The book triggers an emotional response as you read which I think is what Greta was aiming for, clearly shown with the action that has come from her public appearances and protests. Being only 16 she's got more guts than most figures in positions of power having a sincere want to do things for good. The format and pointlessness of this book just wasn't it.
Although this book isn't stating anything new about the issue of climate change, it is nonetheless a powerful and inspiring collection of speeches from someone with a big heart who aims to change the world. Big love for this girl. 2.5/5 stars.
There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.
This is quite a hard book to rate, especially as it's a collection of speeches and not something with a flowing consistent plot. There was a lot of repetition which makes sense in speeches but it really started to annoy me in book from making me think this was probably not the best way to put the message of the climate crisis across. The amount of times I heard 'our house is on fire' for example, did my head in a little.
My main issue with the book however is that it gave no solutions and just repeated the same message: 'stop releasing greenhouse gases.' There was nothing about what the average person can do to reduce their carbon emissions, something that would have been highly useful to read about instead of hearing over and over that it's the fault of large global companies and now future generations have to struggle with the damage they have left. The companies are not going to read this, so to me the speeches in book form seemed kind of pointless and boring at times if I'm honest, to get through. 'We must change almost everything in our current societies', and then she doesn't explain how. The why certainly comes across but she annoyingly explains no further. Instead of publishing speeches, an informative and practical book teaching people how to be more environmentally friendly would have been so much better. Do I see this book as a cash grab? Kind of, and it sucks.
At the beginning Greta states that her speeches are not political statements which they absolutely are. At around 30% she mentions the politics we need are currently non-existent and politicians don't care. Maybe don’t include politics if you said you wouldn’t..?
Don't you think that a 16 year old can speak for herself?
I think Greta is wonderful person including everyone who supports her. There were phrases like 'Aspergers is not a disease, it is a gift', that must be amazing for young people with disabilities to hear as it can inspire them to lead actual change with the many current issues we have in the world. The book triggers an emotional response as you read which I think is what Greta was aiming for, clearly shown with the action that has come from her public appearances and protests. Being only 16 she's got more guts than most figures in positions of power having a sincere want to do things for good. The format and pointlessness of this book just wasn't it.
Although this book isn't stating anything new about the issue of climate change, it is nonetheless a powerful and inspiring collection of speeches from someone with a big heart who aims to change the world. Big love for this girl. 2.5/5 stars.
April 22, 2024
No reasonable person could ever deny Greta Thunberg’s courage. The Sweden-born Thunberg is in her early twenties as of this writing, but she has become perhaps the single best-known climate activist on Earth. And it all started so modestly – she was just 15 years old when, frustrated at the Swedish Government’s lack of action on climate issues, she walked out of school and began protesting outside the Swedish parliament building in Stockholm, all by herself.
She called it Skolstrejk för klimatet (“School Strike for Climate”), and her activism began to gain a following – and then some. Today, Thunberg is one of the most important leaders of a worldwide movement to promote awareness and action in response to climate change, and her book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference provides an inspiring look at this brave and determined young woman’s journey into activism.
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is a collection of Thunberg’s public speeches and addresses, delivered in a variety of venues throughout the world. Therefore, and perhaps inevitably, there is a bit of repetition among the various speeches, as Thunberg has a logically consistent message that she is trying to deliver to the people of a world that is, at best, only partially disposed to listen.
The first of the speeches collected in No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is, appropriately, from Thunberg’s native Sweden. In a Climate March held at Stockholm on 8 September 2016, Thunberg set the tone for all of her activism, with a tone of angry eloquence: “To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself – Your silence is almost worst of all” (p. 3). Her words reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr., in a number of his civil-rights speeches, saying that what he thought the people of future times might find most appalling, with regard to the United States’ slow acceptance of civil-rights reform, was not the cruel words and actions of the bad people, but rather the silence of the good people.
Thunberg’s activism quickly went international. In a “Declaration of Rebellion” against extinction, held at Parliament Square, London, on 31 October 2016, Thunberg made clear how appalling it is that “hardly anyone ever mention[s] that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, with about 200 species going extinct every single day” (p. 7). With her formidable skills for anticipating and refuting objections, she added that “Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change” (pp. 7-8). For good measure, she posed a rhetorical question that is much more than rhetorical: “[W]hat is the point of learning facts within the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly mean nothing to our politicians and our society?” (p. 10).
Thunberg continued to maintain a feverish travel schedule, and to speak out forthrightly in a variety of venues. At a United Nations climate change conference, held at Katowice, Poland, on 15 December 2016, Thunberg stated that “We are about to sacrifice our civilization for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue to make enormous amounts of money. We are about to sacrifice the biosphere so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few” (p. 12). The forceful quality of Thunberg’s rhetoric has done much to make hers one of the most resonant voices worldwide regarding the issue of climate change.
The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Thunberg spoke on 25 January 2019, might have seemed like a potentially iffy audience for Thunberg’s activism. After all, one of the reasons given most frequently for “slowing down” on climate change is that strong action on the issue will supposedly be bad for economic growth. But Thunberg forged ahead with her customary courage and directness, telling her Davos audience that “Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases” (p. 17).
Once again anticipating a possible objection – that she is somehow taking a “doomsday” or “alarmist” approach to the topic of climate change – Thunberg reminds her Davos listeners that “Adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is” (p. 22).
And any person with a disability might find a measure of inspiration in how Thunberg relates her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis to her activism: “Some people mock me for my diagnosis. But Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People also say that because I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position. But that’s exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been ‘normal’ and social, I would have organized myself in an organization, or started an organization by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing, I did this instead” (p. 25).
Among people with disabilities, and among disability scholars and disability advocates, one often hears the idea that a person with a disability is not “disabled”; rather, they are “differently able.” The story of Thunberg’s emergence as an activist is a particularly powerful illustration of that principle.
At the Austrian World Summit in Vienna on 28 May 2019, Thunberg addressed those who might suggest that moderate anti-climate change measures will suffice for now: “If you say that we can ‘solve’ this crisis just by maybe increasing or lowering some taxes, phasing out coal in ten or fifteen years, putting up solar panels on new buildings or manufacturing more electric cars, then people will think we can ‘solve’ this crisis with a few political reforms, without anyone making a real effort” (p. 72).
And four months later, when she went before the United States Congress, in Washington, D.C., Thunberg had to know that she’d be facing a tough audience. The U.S. is, after all, one of the few countries in the world where a politician can get away with saying, “I don’t believe in climate change,” the way one might say that one doesn’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster or the Easter Bunny.
But when she addressed Congress on 18 September 2019, Thunberg framed the issue in a way that might have given pause to even the most strident climate-change deniers. She pointed out that there is now only a 50 percent chance of avoiding a 1.5-degree (Celsius) global temperature rise as of the year 2030. Then she asked the members of Congress there assembled: “Would any one of you step onto a plane if you knew it had more than a 50 percent chance of crashing? More to the point: would you put your children on that flight?” (p. 87)
One gets a sense of the frustration Thunberg may sometimes feel, addressing audiences of generally older people who may not feel the same degree of urgency about climate change that the people of younger generations do. Five days after addressing the U.S. Congress, Thunberg travelled on to New York City. At the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2019, Thunberg did not mince words: “Your generation is 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” (p. 98).
At the same time, Thunberg seems to see a measure of hope in the activism of young people like herself. At the Week for Future Climate Strike in Montreal on 27 September 2019, Thunberg began on a much lighter note, pointing out the many things that Canada and her native Sweden have in common (moose, cold winters, snow, pine trees, ice hockey). Then she praised young people’s activism on the climate issue and added – in French, for the benefit of her Québécois audience – that “Le changement arrive – si vous l’aimez ou non!” (“Change is coming, whether you like it or not!”)
I appreciate Thunberg’s forthrightness, and the way she emphasizes the urgency of this issue. I also like the fact that she won’t back down for anyone or anything. In 2019, when Time magazine recognized Thunberg as the magazine’s Person of the Year, an unhappy then-President Donald Trump – miffed, perhaps, that Time had not recognized him instead – tweeted that the magazine’s recognition of Thunberg was “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend. Chill, Greta, Chill!”
One year later, when Trump was angrily railing against his defeat in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Thunberg got a bit of her own back, tweeting that Trump’s false claims of election fraud were “So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend. Chill, Donald, Chill!”
Well-played, Ms. Thunberg. Well-played indeed.
She called it Skolstrejk för klimatet (“School Strike for Climate”), and her activism began to gain a following – and then some. Today, Thunberg is one of the most important leaders of a worldwide movement to promote awareness and action in response to climate change, and her book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference provides an inspiring look at this brave and determined young woman’s journey into activism.
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is a collection of Thunberg’s public speeches and addresses, delivered in a variety of venues throughout the world. Therefore, and perhaps inevitably, there is a bit of repetition among the various speeches, as Thunberg has a logically consistent message that she is trying to deliver to the people of a world that is, at best, only partially disposed to listen.
The first of the speeches collected in No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is, appropriately, from Thunberg’s native Sweden. In a Climate March held at Stockholm on 8 September 2016, Thunberg set the tone for all of her activism, with a tone of angry eloquence: “To all of you who choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself – Your silence is almost worst of all” (p. 3). Her words reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr., in a number of his civil-rights speeches, saying that what he thought the people of future times might find most appalling, with regard to the United States’ slow acceptance of civil-rights reform, was not the cruel words and actions of the bad people, but rather the silence of the good people.
Thunberg’s activism quickly went international. In a “Declaration of Rebellion” against extinction, held at Parliament Square, London, on 31 October 2016, Thunberg made clear how appalling it is that “hardly anyone ever mention[s] that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, with about 200 species going extinct every single day” (p. 7). With her formidable skills for anticipating and refuting objections, she added that “Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change” (pp. 7-8). For good measure, she posed a rhetorical question that is much more than rhetorical: “[W]hat is the point of learning facts within the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly mean nothing to our politicians and our society?” (p. 10).
Thunberg continued to maintain a feverish travel schedule, and to speak out forthrightly in a variety of venues. At a United Nations climate change conference, held at Katowice, Poland, on 15 December 2016, Thunberg stated that “We are about to sacrifice our civilization for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue to make enormous amounts of money. We are about to sacrifice the biosphere so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. But it is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few” (p. 12). The forceful quality of Thunberg’s rhetoric has done much to make hers one of the most resonant voices worldwide regarding the issue of climate change.
The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Thunberg spoke on 25 January 2019, might have seemed like a potentially iffy audience for Thunberg’s activism. After all, one of the reasons given most frequently for “slowing down” on climate change is that strong action on the issue will supposedly be bad for economic growth. But Thunberg forged ahead with her customary courage and directness, telling her Davos audience that “Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases” (p. 17).
Once again anticipating a possible objection – that she is somehow taking a “doomsday” or “alarmist” approach to the topic of climate change – Thunberg reminds her Davos listeners that “Adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is” (p. 22).
And any person with a disability might find a measure of inspiration in how Thunberg relates her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis to her activism: “Some people mock me for my diagnosis. But Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People also say that because I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position. But that’s exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been ‘normal’ and social, I would have organized myself in an organization, or started an organization by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing, I did this instead” (p. 25).
Among people with disabilities, and among disability scholars and disability advocates, one often hears the idea that a person with a disability is not “disabled”; rather, they are “differently able.” The story of Thunberg’s emergence as an activist is a particularly powerful illustration of that principle.
At the Austrian World Summit in Vienna on 28 May 2019, Thunberg addressed those who might suggest that moderate anti-climate change measures will suffice for now: “If you say that we can ‘solve’ this crisis just by maybe increasing or lowering some taxes, phasing out coal in ten or fifteen years, putting up solar panels on new buildings or manufacturing more electric cars, then people will think we can ‘solve’ this crisis with a few political reforms, without anyone making a real effort” (p. 72).
And four months later, when she went before the United States Congress, in Washington, D.C., Thunberg had to know that she’d be facing a tough audience. The U.S. is, after all, one of the few countries in the world where a politician can get away with saying, “I don’t believe in climate change,” the way one might say that one doesn’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster or the Easter Bunny.
But when she addressed Congress on 18 September 2019, Thunberg framed the issue in a way that might have given pause to even the most strident climate-change deniers. She pointed out that there is now only a 50 percent chance of avoiding a 1.5-degree (Celsius) global temperature rise as of the year 2030. Then she asked the members of Congress there assembled: “Would any one of you step onto a plane if you knew it had more than a 50 percent chance of crashing? More to the point: would you put your children on that flight?” (p. 87)
One gets a sense of the frustration Thunberg may sometimes feel, addressing audiences of generally older people who may not feel the same degree of urgency about climate change that the people of younger generations do. Five days after addressing the U.S. Congress, Thunberg travelled on to New York City. At the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2019, Thunberg did not mince words: “Your generation is 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” (p. 98).
At the same time, Thunberg seems to see a measure of hope in the activism of young people like herself. At the Week for Future Climate Strike in Montreal on 27 September 2019, Thunberg began on a much lighter note, pointing out the many things that Canada and her native Sweden have in common (moose, cold winters, snow, pine trees, ice hockey). Then she praised young people’s activism on the climate issue and added – in French, for the benefit of her Québécois audience – that “Le changement arrive – si vous l’aimez ou non!” (“Change is coming, whether you like it or not!”)
I appreciate Thunberg’s forthrightness, and the way she emphasizes the urgency of this issue. I also like the fact that she won’t back down for anyone or anything. In 2019, when Time magazine recognized Thunberg as the magazine’s Person of the Year, an unhappy then-President Donald Trump – miffed, perhaps, that Time had not recognized him instead – tweeted that the magazine’s recognition of Thunberg was “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend. Chill, Greta, Chill!”
One year later, when Trump was angrily railing against his defeat in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Thunberg got a bit of her own back, tweeting that Trump’s false claims of election fraud were “So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend. Chill, Donald, Chill!”
Well-played, Ms. Thunberg. Well-played indeed.
January 19, 2020
Apologies for the French, but it's so fucking hard to understand why we can't just get with the program.
What's happening is this. The answers to our problems lie in extremely cheap, low tech solutions. All my reading on this at the moment leads me to the conclusion that peasants in China, India, Africa, South America can do the right thing we can't. Because it's too easy for us. We seem to be so propagandised with the notion that if things aren't high tech, they are primitive.
People. We have to ignore big business, and unfortunately also our governments. Luckily we don't need them. We just need to want to survive and make nature everything instead of nothing.
Written and authorised by an Australian whose country is dying because we are all such total dicks.
The same thing said politely by Greta and her friend:
https://youtu.be/aUCD_24cygQ
What's happening is this. The answers to our problems lie in extremely cheap, low tech solutions. All my reading on this at the moment leads me to the conclusion that peasants in China, India, Africa, South America can do the right thing we can't. Because it's too easy for us. We seem to be so propagandised with the notion that if things aren't high tech, they are primitive.
People. We have to ignore big business, and unfortunately also our governments. Luckily we don't need them. We just need to want to survive and make nature everything instead of nothing.
Written and authorised by an Australian whose country is dying because we are all such total dicks.
The same thing said politely by Greta and her friend:
https://youtu.be/aUCD_24cygQ
June 24, 2019
The only complaint is: some speeches seemed repetitive.
January 25, 2020
15-year-old Swedish Greta Thunberg began a climate awareness strike outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018. Her efforts have become an impetus for millions of other children to go on strike from their schools and the arousal of a worldwide movement to recognize our climate crisis. This is a collection of her speeches before the British Parliament, the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, the French National Assembly, and other organizations and governments. Greta addresses her critics by limiting the global temperatures to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, treating this as a crisis, broadcasting the climate breakdown to the world, making unprecedented changes now, reducing the carbon dioxide emissions, and uniting behind the science. A worthy read of how one child can make a difference.
August 22, 2022
The various speeches in this short little book were all pretty much a variation of each other. However they are all powerful and extremely important.
August 17, 2020
Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.
This slim volume collects together a handful of climate activist, Greta Thunberg's, speeches. I had probably heard all of these before, through live recordings and Youtube videos, and yet the passion and the power of her words was not lost on me, in their written format.
These speeches often overlap and some phrases are replicated throughout, but I found these repeated statements only to confirm rather than detract from her plea for radical climate initiatives to be put in place. I mean, we have had lifetimes to alter our thoughts and our actions and still many praise Greta one day whilst living a life detrimental to the longevity of our planet on every other, so I think we can forgive her for a few repetitious statements many seem willing to ignore anyway!
Her speeches promote a radical execution of the lethal way society functions, but we are too far gone for any other alternative to be a viable option for saving our planet. Every single word is a heartfelt plea for action and change, and who are we not to listen?
This slim volume collects together a handful of climate activist, Greta Thunberg's, speeches. I had probably heard all of these before, through live recordings and Youtube videos, and yet the passion and the power of her words was not lost on me, in their written format.
These speeches often overlap and some phrases are replicated throughout, but I found these repeated statements only to confirm rather than detract from her plea for radical climate initiatives to be put in place. I mean, we have had lifetimes to alter our thoughts and our actions and still many praise Greta one day whilst living a life detrimental to the longevity of our planet on every other, so I think we can forgive her for a few repetitious statements many seem willing to ignore anyway!
Her speeches promote a radical execution of the lethal way society functions, but we are too far gone for any other alternative to be a viable option for saving our planet. Every single word is a heartfelt plea for action and change, and who are we not to listen?
December 15, 2019
Throughout the book or the speeches, Greta insists to be treated like an adult, but most of her speeches begin by saying “I am Greta Thunberg and I am sixteen years old”. Why? Does her age carry any significance? I will value what she has said and criticize it.
First, the hypocrisy is nothing short of mind-boggling. She says, “Even the most green politicians and climate scientists go on flying around that world and eating meat and dairy.” What is she doing? She flies around the world. She is promoting the book of her speeches. Millions of copies of it will be printed on paper, thanks to the death of millions of trees. I mean come on. Stand on principle or do not lecture the world.
Is the book helping the environment? Creating awareness among people or politicians? Suggesting anything new for individuals to do to help the environment? Or does it contain any suggestions on how to educate people? No.
All the speeches are entitled ramblings. No one asked her to leave school to protest. “How dare you?” to impose this kind of hardship on her, she asks. Give me a break. It is her choice and she should own it.
It is not her fault. The hashtag viral culture just catapulted her to fame, even nominating for the Nobel prize. For what? Nothing. It is like a cat distracted by a laser. Her popularity just goes to show “we ran out of things on earth to do”. There are millions of people who are personally, politically, and globally doing things to help the environment, but they don’t get any attention. The things that they do actually work and they do not seek attention.
Climate change is real and she is a terrible messenger.
First, the hypocrisy is nothing short of mind-boggling. She says, “Even the most green politicians and climate scientists go on flying around that world and eating meat and dairy.” What is she doing? She flies around the world. She is promoting the book of her speeches. Millions of copies of it will be printed on paper, thanks to the death of millions of trees. I mean come on. Stand on principle or do not lecture the world.
Is the book helping the environment? Creating awareness among people or politicians? Suggesting anything new for individuals to do to help the environment? Or does it contain any suggestions on how to educate people? No.
All the speeches are entitled ramblings. No one asked her to leave school to protest. “How dare you?” to impose this kind of hardship on her, she asks. Give me a break. It is her choice and she should own it.
It is not her fault. The hashtag viral culture just catapulted her to fame, even nominating for the Nobel prize. For what? Nothing. It is like a cat distracted by a laser. Her popularity just goes to show “we ran out of things on earth to do”. There are millions of people who are personally, politically, and globally doing things to help the environment, but they don’t get any attention. The things that they do actually work and they do not seek attention.
Climate change is real and she is a terrible messenger.
October 10, 2019
I could have written defenses for her but I think she defends herself well enough against all the arguments raised against her. If people are unwilling to listen to her before judging her, I don't think they will care to read about her side here. And several reviewers here have already done that.
And I do not wish to talk about climate change problem here either which seems obvious enough. And again a job people like Greta are doing well enough.
There is though one thing I agree on with critics - she should be in school. But then it is because of inaction of grownups like me and you that all those students are out on strikes. It is us probably who should have been fighting for the planet. And, it seems to be only our own unwillingness to look at the darkness in future directly that seems to show in our unwillingness to listen to what she has to say.
I try avoiding use of polythenes rather carrying groceries in hands something getting ridiculed for it and avoid buying hard copies of books and newspapers - the paper of which would be wasted after once I have read them and I, both out of preferances and of lack of options, am entirely dependent upon public transportation. But I also don't at all think that it is enough. The very electricity I used (made out of combustion of coal) and mobile data I am dependent upon for my access to Internet (radatjons harmful to birds) ensure that my personal contribution to nature is a very negative one. A friend of mine, resourceless financially, ran a NGO charity that failed within a year of its operations. But within that one year it had planted 300 trees. Now he was no Greta Thunberg, but he was capable of that. What I do is dwarfed even by that. And I don't think people like me have any right of objecting to the actions of generation who is about to be forced to pick up the trash we continue to leave behind.
The argument of critics that she has no solution to offer is answered by her - listen to scientists, then. After all, ain't it is these very critics who keep claiming she is only a 15 year old. As for supposed destruction of economic system, I don't think present economic system has managed much - even in USA, the pole star of capitalism; there are people starving and not managing enough to meet the basic needs. And this is besides destruction of planet. Neither most of humans nor the environment has survived damanged done by capitalism. What then is so fabulous about our economic system? Humanity is the only nonh-zero waste species of the world - that is how intelligent we and our systems are.
Anyway, it all seems repeating same things that have already talked about several times before. The real reason for writing this piece is my admiration for author. It is admirable, her clarity of expressions - something not easily visible in our political-so-called-'leaders'. She is seeing things so clearly that if she be abnormal (another criticism she has been getting a lot, I mean seriously?); it is abnormal in admirable way. She kind of gets more of my followship than most popular leaders would get out of me (very few speeches ever move me and hers do). If she stubbornly refuses to entertain arguments defending present system and status quo; it is of clarity of vision - of seeing things clearly, she knows that present system is indefensible - an albatross around necks of older generations. I agree that we should seeeverything in terms of how it might help the planet, that we must panic - it is of clarity of vision she asks us to do so. And this clarity of vision is something that people like me won't be able to, being distracted by thousand minor trifals such as the next book. I truly admire such clarity of vision. People like me need people like her to tell what is most important. And if you really think that despite her good intentions, there are some points at which she is wrong (such as littering done by her folowers at her campaign) - than remind yourself she and her followers are still young and doing older people's job.
I do think she deserves a Nobel Prize but I hope they don't give it to her this time as I get the feeling that she has only started and is going to do far much more - things that, once again, really are responsiblity of mine and preceeding generations. And once we have given her Nobel Prize, we won't have much else to thank her with.
But again, may be they should. That should keep her in attention of media much longer. Because I am scared that the powerful are already treating her the way they treat such admirable idealists - as a sort of entertainment. They invite her, listen to her speeches, express their concern about issues raised by her, applause her efforts in patronising ways and then move on to next entertainment in charts. Their merely having listened to her and applauded her efforts is supposed to be seen as their having done their bit (and why should it not be so? How much more do most of us who truly believe in her cause are doing?).
Evil is full of devilish charms but none of those that dark characters in novels show. The people we are talking about are not dragons but Prince Charmings! they are clean shaved, often handsome and well built men wearing suits, looking clean or equally charming empowered women- no blood stains visible anywhere in those tall office buildings - not even under the mattreses, no smoke coming out of factories anywhere in surroundings (the factories are tucked away herr in third world countries). These people commiting highest amount of evil (not giving enough wages to their customers, creating products harmful for environment) are capable of convincing themselves that they are really good people - because so often the sufferings they cause are so far away (both geographically and chronologically) from what they see in their daily lives. And even others might not see the evil in them, after all how many of us hold billionaire businessmen and most disgusting politicians in admiration?
Yes such evil people are really few; but than so are people who can really be called good (Martin Luther King Junior, Greta Thunberg etc). Most of us here (including yours truly) is just dummy, dull, banal people - who easily give into evil in power, look after their own ass by taking jobs that will help powerful keep thier kingdoms; while the dreams of good people rarely move us to only for a few moments of intense emotions. People who are capable of very little good action.
The very idea of 200 species dying every day would haunt a really good person - that is about one specie for time you might take to read this review. A life form that was there on planet for millions of years won't any longer be and might not ever be here again. It should make us loss sleep, haunt us all the time but it doesn't. I think it does haunt Greta though, I think it is kind of thing she can't get out of her mind (so feels compelled to repeat it) and that is kind of reasons why she (or really other activists like her) are better humans than we are or at least I am.
Greta says powerful are counting on technology not built yet. True that (unless conspiracy theory they are hiding those Technologies for personal profits) but also ... I have read and seen some examples of tricks and techniques that provide commendably better resource utilization and waste management (mostly in Japan, though a few are from others parts including India too) with very little effort, cost and not any inconveniences on part of users after they have been put to use but most people for whom such techniques are; won't be moved to make even those slight changes. Most people just resist change.
Unlike Greta, I really don't have hopes for humanity making it through this crisis. However, if my assessment of her is true, I don't think anything will stop her and some of her friends from trying.
And I do not wish to talk about climate change problem here either which seems obvious enough. And again a job people like Greta are doing well enough.
There is though one thing I agree on with critics - she should be in school. But then it is because of inaction of grownups like me and you that all those students are out on strikes. It is us probably who should have been fighting for the planet. And, it seems to be only our own unwillingness to look at the darkness in future directly that seems to show in our unwillingness to listen to what she has to say.
I try avoiding use of polythenes rather carrying groceries in hands something getting ridiculed for it and avoid buying hard copies of books and newspapers - the paper of which would be wasted after once I have read them and I, both out of preferances and of lack of options, am entirely dependent upon public transportation. But I also don't at all think that it is enough. The very electricity I used (made out of combustion of coal) and mobile data I am dependent upon for my access to Internet (radatjons harmful to birds) ensure that my personal contribution to nature is a very negative one. A friend of mine, resourceless financially, ran a NGO charity that failed within a year of its operations. But within that one year it had planted 300 trees. Now he was no Greta Thunberg, but he was capable of that. What I do is dwarfed even by that. And I don't think people like me have any right of objecting to the actions of generation who is about to be forced to pick up the trash we continue to leave behind.
The argument of critics that she has no solution to offer is answered by her - listen to scientists, then. After all, ain't it is these very critics who keep claiming she is only a 15 year old. As for supposed destruction of economic system, I don't think present economic system has managed much - even in USA, the pole star of capitalism; there are people starving and not managing enough to meet the basic needs. And this is besides destruction of planet. Neither most of humans nor the environment has survived damanged done by capitalism. What then is so fabulous about our economic system? Humanity is the only nonh-zero waste species of the world - that is how intelligent we and our systems are.
Anyway, it all seems repeating same things that have already talked about several times before. The real reason for writing this piece is my admiration for author. It is admirable, her clarity of expressions - something not easily visible in our political-so-called-'leaders'. She is seeing things so clearly that if she be abnormal (another criticism she has been getting a lot, I mean seriously?); it is abnormal in admirable way. She kind of gets more of my followship than most popular leaders would get out of me (very few speeches ever move me and hers do). If she stubbornly refuses to entertain arguments defending present system and status quo; it is of clarity of vision - of seeing things clearly, she knows that present system is indefensible - an albatross around necks of older generations. I agree that we should seeeverything in terms of how it might help the planet, that we must panic - it is of clarity of vision she asks us to do so. And this clarity of vision is something that people like me won't be able to, being distracted by thousand minor trifals such as the next book. I truly admire such clarity of vision. People like me need people like her to tell what is most important. And if you really think that despite her good intentions, there are some points at which she is wrong (such as littering done by her folowers at her campaign) - than remind yourself she and her followers are still young and doing older people's job.
I do think she deserves a Nobel Prize but I hope they don't give it to her this time as I get the feeling that she has only started and is going to do far much more - things that, once again, really are responsiblity of mine and preceeding generations. And once we have given her Nobel Prize, we won't have much else to thank her with.
But again, may be they should. That should keep her in attention of media much longer. Because I am scared that the powerful are already treating her the way they treat such admirable idealists - as a sort of entertainment. They invite her, listen to her speeches, express their concern about issues raised by her, applause her efforts in patronising ways and then move on to next entertainment in charts. Their merely having listened to her and applauded her efforts is supposed to be seen as their having done their bit (and why should it not be so? How much more do most of us who truly believe in her cause are doing?).
Evil is full of devilish charms but none of those that dark characters in novels show. The people we are talking about are not dragons but Prince Charmings! they are clean shaved, often handsome and well built men wearing suits, looking clean or equally charming empowered women- no blood stains visible anywhere in those tall office buildings - not even under the mattreses, no smoke coming out of factories anywhere in surroundings (the factories are tucked away herr in third world countries). These people commiting highest amount of evil (not giving enough wages to their customers, creating products harmful for environment) are capable of convincing themselves that they are really good people - because so often the sufferings they cause are so far away (both geographically and chronologically) from what they see in their daily lives. And even others might not see the evil in them, after all how many of us hold billionaire businessmen and most disgusting politicians in admiration?
Yes such evil people are really few; but than so are people who can really be called good (Martin Luther King Junior, Greta Thunberg etc). Most of us here (including yours truly) is just dummy, dull, banal people - who easily give into evil in power, look after their own ass by taking jobs that will help powerful keep thier kingdoms; while the dreams of good people rarely move us to only for a few moments of intense emotions. People who are capable of very little good action.
The very idea of 200 species dying every day would haunt a really good person - that is about one specie for time you might take to read this review. A life form that was there on planet for millions of years won't any longer be and might not ever be here again. It should make us loss sleep, haunt us all the time but it doesn't. I think it does haunt Greta though, I think it is kind of thing she can't get out of her mind (so feels compelled to repeat it) and that is kind of reasons why she (or really other activists like her) are better humans than we are or at least I am.
Greta says powerful are counting on technology not built yet. True that (unless conspiracy theory they are hiding those Technologies for personal profits) but also ... I have read and seen some examples of tricks and techniques that provide commendably better resource utilization and waste management (mostly in Japan, though a few are from others parts including India too) with very little effort, cost and not any inconveniences on part of users after they have been put to use but most people for whom such techniques are; won't be moved to make even those slight changes. Most people just resist change.
Unlike Greta, I really don't have hopes for humanity making it through this crisis. However, if my assessment of her is true, I don't think anything will stop her and some of her friends from trying.
March 10, 2020
Worth reading and thinking over, but understandably a little repetitive.
January 8, 2024
Scratching the Surface…
1) Speeches to the Public:
--This collection of 11 speeches between 2018-2019 may indeed be a helpful first step for those less political/on-the-fence in the Global North (thus, default liberals) to start engaging with the topics of climate crisis and an economic system dictated by money-power rather than social needs…
--However, speeches in written form are quite one-dimensional, and lack the detailed next steps for those already convinced.
--Only 3 of the speeches were originally directed at the public/activists (i.e. climate marches). The power of these speeches is actually less about the speaker/words, and more about the audience/environment; just being there, seeing others in your society not as merely working for wages or commuting or being spectators or privately socializing but actually as participants in politics, this can alter our imagination for social possibilities.
--I mean “politics” in the general sense of social decision-making. Of course, sophisticated dominance hierarchies want to simulate this while preventing actual participation, so they manufacture the narrow political theatre where puppet politicians bicker about divisive topics while the audience are rendered as divided-and-ruled spectators.
--Without being there to experience the stirrings of the audience and the conversations afterwards, the speeches themselves are repetitions of the same brief pitch. Greta’s writing levels up in the summary essays promoting the excellent 2022 compilation The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions.
--Side note: “equity” is used 7 times in this collection, whereas “equality” is absent. “What is Politics?” has a neat video episode on this shift: 9.2 - A Rainbow of Inequality: When Social Control Masquerades as Social Justice.
2) Speeches to Dominance Hierarchies:
--Now, most of these speeches were actually delivered to dominance hierarchies, i.e. World Economic Forum, various Parliaments, UN Climate Conference, etc.
--Here, the speeches alone are mostly performative. If we set aside the tendency which promotes sociopaths to the top of these dominance hierarchies, let’s say there are some enlightened elites that can be swayed on a moralistic/emotional level to prioritize addressing the climate crisis. What are the remaining barriers to change?
--To present concrete examples, we can consider:
i) Al Gore:
--As the former US Vice President to the Clinton establishment (infamous for NAFTA’s further power to global capital and repealing Glass-Steagall to further unleash Wall Street) with many political/financial ties, Gore has many strings he can pull.
--However, despite his successes in popularizing An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, his direct solution is abysmal, literally trying to camouflage the colossal parasite that is the global financial markets with a “green” “sustainable” veneer. How is investing in Amazon/Google/Intel/Visa helping the environment? The most these financial innovations can do is privatize nature and gamble with it in a casino (i.e. speculation, valuing short-term pillaging rather than long-term social needs; nature's time is inherently long-term).
…This is like sticking peace symbols on bombs and then calling yourself a pacifist.
ii) Bill Gates:
--As a top-notch capitalist oligarch, I mean philanthropist, Gates is determined to treat the climate/ecological crises as “technical” issues that can be solved within global capitalism.
…Strange, because he is also trying to solve world hunger, even though global capitalism already has the technologies to overproduce food, dumping “surpluses” to keep prices profitable for colossal corporations (Big Agriculture: featuring Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bayer which owns Monsanto, etc.) while displacing and ensnaring Global South farmers in debt traps.
--But you cannot just give money to the poor so they can afford food. And you definitely cannot challenge the imperialist global arrangements that prevent economic sovereignty (The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions).
…Instead, you facilitate the takeover by corporations like MasterCard into the Global South to spread “financial inclusion” (which clearly isn’t “political”). Because clearly it takes the “financial innovations” of a foreign multinational corporation rather than local control via economic sovereignty! After all, it’s not a political/social power issue, it’s just a technical issue.
…To paraphrase Paul Volcker after the 2008 Financial Crisis:
…So, while I do not fully agree with the framing of The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg, I have to agree that lecturing to the World Economic Forum is rather performative, and we need to level-up our class/power structure analyses (learning from history with a historical materialist lens) to identify our true allies (understanding their structural incentives/potentials/limitations) and build winning coalitions (seeking high leverage points and building bargaining power). I’ll review some books that detail this soon…
1) Speeches to the Public:
--This collection of 11 speeches between 2018-2019 may indeed be a helpful first step for those less political/on-the-fence in the Global North (thus, default liberals) to start engaging with the topics of climate crisis and an economic system dictated by money-power rather than social needs…
--However, speeches in written form are quite one-dimensional, and lack the detailed next steps for those already convinced.
--Only 3 of the speeches were originally directed at the public/activists (i.e. climate marches). The power of these speeches is actually less about the speaker/words, and more about the audience/environment; just being there, seeing others in your society not as merely working for wages or commuting or being spectators or privately socializing but actually as participants in politics, this can alter our imagination for social possibilities.
--I mean “politics” in the general sense of social decision-making. Of course, sophisticated dominance hierarchies want to simulate this while preventing actual participation, so they manufacture the narrow political theatre where puppet politicians bicker about divisive topics while the audience are rendered as divided-and-ruled spectators.
--Without being there to experience the stirrings of the audience and the conversations afterwards, the speeches themselves are repetitions of the same brief pitch. Greta’s writing levels up in the summary essays promoting the excellent 2022 compilation The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions.
--Side note: “equity” is used 7 times in this collection, whereas “equality” is absent. “What is Politics?” has a neat video episode on this shift: 9.2 - A Rainbow of Inequality: When Social Control Masquerades as Social Justice.
2) Speeches to Dominance Hierarchies:
--Now, most of these speeches were actually delivered to dominance hierarchies, i.e. World Economic Forum, various Parliaments, UN Climate Conference, etc.
--Here, the speeches alone are mostly performative. If we set aside the tendency which promotes sociopaths to the top of these dominance hierarchies, let’s say there are some enlightened elites that can be swayed on a moralistic/emotional level to prioritize addressing the climate crisis. What are the remaining barriers to change?
--To present concrete examples, we can consider:
i) Al Gore:
--As the former US Vice President to the Clinton establishment (infamous for NAFTA’s further power to global capital and repealing Glass-Steagall to further unleash Wall Street) with many political/financial ties, Gore has many strings he can pull.
--However, despite his successes in popularizing An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, his direct solution is abysmal, literally trying to camouflage the colossal parasite that is the global financial markets with a “green” “sustainable” veneer. How is investing in Amazon/Google/Intel/Visa helping the environment? The most these financial innovations can do is privatize nature and gamble with it in a casino (i.e. speculation, valuing short-term pillaging rather than long-term social needs; nature's time is inherently long-term).
…This is like sticking peace symbols on bombs and then calling yourself a pacifist.
ii) Bill Gates:
--As a top-notch capitalist oligarch, I mean philanthropist, Gates is determined to treat the climate/ecological crises as “technical” issues that can be solved within global capitalism.
…Strange, because he is also trying to solve world hunger, even though global capitalism already has the technologies to overproduce food, dumping “surpluses” to keep prices profitable for colossal corporations (Big Agriculture: featuring Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bayer which owns Monsanto, etc.) while displacing and ensnaring Global South farmers in debt traps.
--But you cannot just give money to the poor so they can afford food. And you definitely cannot challenge the imperialist global arrangements that prevent economic sovereignty (The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions).
…Instead, you facilitate the takeover by corporations like MasterCard into the Global South to spread “financial inclusion” (which clearly isn’t “political”). Because clearly it takes the “financial innovations” of a foreign multinational corporation rather than local control via economic sovereignty! After all, it’s not a political/social power issue, it’s just a technical issue.
…To paraphrase Paul Volcker after the 2008 Financial Crisis:
The only useful thing banks have invented in the past 20 years is the ATM.…Volcker unleashed his own economic terror on the Global South when he was chair of the Federal Reserve (the Volcker Shock, helping to derail Third World industrialization and leading to the Third World Debt Crisis), which is the point of this section: no matter how ingenious or “enlightened”, these individuals are situated in positions that leave them devoted to profoundly exploitative and irrational structures.
…So, while I do not fully agree with the framing of The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg, I have to agree that lecturing to the World Economic Forum is rather performative, and we need to level-up our class/power structure analyses (learning from history with a historical materialist lens) to identify our true allies (understanding their structural incentives/potentials/limitations) and build winning coalitions (seeking high leverage points and building bargaining power). I’ll review some books that detail this soon…
April 18, 2020
"This is all about an emergency, and not just any emergency. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced."
Greta Thunberg is not speaking about the pandemic, although there are many similarities. The world sees the travesties of this current emergency because it is so 'in the face'. But if everyone put the puzzle pieces of global warming together - rising temperatures, increase occurrence of droughts, floods, and wildfires, the melting polar cap, and more, maybe the immediate need for action would be apparent.
I found this book of speeches sad in so many ways. It is sad that such a young girl must worry about the environment her children will live in, sad that the message is not being shouted by more adults, sad because some national leaders are allowing this dire forecast to happen sooner than the scientists have predicted. As James Freeman Clarke said in 1870, "A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the nest generation." It is as true now as it was then.
Other quotes
"We live in a strange world where everyone can choose their own reality and buy their own truth."
"We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases."
Greta Thunberg is not speaking about the pandemic, although there are many similarities. The world sees the travesties of this current emergency because it is so 'in the face'. But if everyone put the puzzle pieces of global warming together - rising temperatures, increase occurrence of droughts, floods, and wildfires, the melting polar cap, and more, maybe the immediate need for action would be apparent.
I found this book of speeches sad in so many ways. It is sad that such a young girl must worry about the environment her children will live in, sad that the message is not being shouted by more adults, sad because some national leaders are allowing this dire forecast to happen sooner than the scientists have predicted. As James Freeman Clarke said in 1870, "A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the nest generation." It is as true now as it was then.
Other quotes
"We live in a strange world where everyone can choose their own reality and buy their own truth."
"We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases."
May 23, 2021
Greta Thunberg and her passion for environmental justice is beyond description!
This collection of speeches is exactly what we all need. To bring attention to and confront these major issues of climate crisis and do all we can to create a change!
One of the greatest messages Greta brought to our attention, is that we can't do this alone! This is our house and "it's burning." We need to put the fire out together!
An absolute inspiration!
This collection of speeches is exactly what we all need. To bring attention to and confront these major issues of climate crisis and do all we can to create a change!
One of the greatest messages Greta brought to our attention, is that we can't do this alone! This is our house and "it's burning." We need to put the fire out together!
An absolute inspiration!
February 21, 2020
This will be a long review, and I would even say it is unfinished, as I ran out of characters before I ran out of things to say. Don't expect coherence.
Greta Thunberg is an entitled little girl who regularly skips her special education school that children in poorer countries could only dream of visiting, who blanket-insults and guilttrips her entire audience, throws fits during public speeches, who has arrogated to herself the position of chief spokesperson of global autism (not all autists like that), who tries to push the most bland socialism you can think of despite probably never having read an economics textbook in her life, and who couldn't give less of a damn about the developing world, who still need those nasty fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty.
I see environmentalism as the reaction of modern man to the fact that there are no more sins to atone for. Every lifestyle is as good as any other, talk of virtues has practically disappeared from our language (who knows the adjective for "fortitude"?), religion is a private matter and makes no demands on you or anyone. Yet in our hearts, we know we are sinful, whether we call it that or not. Pre-Christian man knows it as well as Post-Christian man. So we created new sins, and new forms of chastisement (like veganism).
Doesn't the Science agree with her?
This is probably what should make up the bulk of the conversation, yet doesn't. I can already hear the objections: "Unanimous agreement", "scientific consensus", "all the experts agree"... look, science is not a democracy. The truth is not a democracy. I get that as a layperson, you cannot evaluate all the claims for yourself, you have to rely on some authority, and that authority may as well be the majority of all scientists. I don't know how precisely physicists determined that the speed of light, but I trust that they aren't all wrong about that.
Thunberg is entirely correct when she says that we cannot discuss climate change anymore, but for all the wrong reasons. It is not that the research is unanimous, it is that the methodology of both decisionmakers and activists does not allow for dissent. If you deny climate change, nay, if you question climate change, you are hit with arguments from authority and arguments from majority, no matter what science you bring up. Quite often, in addition to that, you are also called a puppet or a benefactor of the carbon industry, greedy, an overall bad, spoiled and pampered person who hates the environment, children, and probably puppies. To get to the point where we can even discuss the scientific aspect, you first have to defend your character against such attacks, which is hard enough to do. Then, you have to show that the research is not as unanimous and uncontroversial as the climate activists claim. And afterwards, you have to defend your sources for climate change not being real, or climate change being beneficial, or climate change not being mainly or at all anthropogenic, from the same kind of character attacks. Once you have done all that, you are still ignored. Too bad.
And this brings me back to science not being a democracy. It is not an appeal for everyone to completely disregard majority opinions, or the opinions of established authorities in the field, as if they didn't matter at all. They do matter a great deal, and it is reasonable to look at them as trustworthy until proven otherwise, especially if you cannot make an educated judgement of your own. However, because they are not infallible, and in fact have spectacularly erred in the past, you shouldn't completely suspend your own judgement. Trusting the authorities is a form of rational ignorance, but it becomes irrational when it concerns a matter of life and death, when you have the means and the talent to educate yourself (which I suppose Goodreads-members have), and when the authorities have shown themselves to be mistaken or corrupt. That climatologists can be mistaken is shown in the link above. That they are corrupt is of course a heavy charge, but let me remind you that it doesn't have to mean that they are bribed. Putting public renown, academic credentials even your own ego in the pursuit of truth is itself a form of corruption, and given that, we can safely say that climate science - despite Thunbergs uninformed and naive claims to the contrary - is in fact corrupted. My impression is that it has become more politicized than even economics! Isn't it odd that the term "denialist" is used for people who deny the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide... and Anthropogenic Climate Change? Austrian Economists or Creationists, two fringe groups in academia if there are any, are still given labels that do not evoke the Holocaust. Even Flat Eathers are not called Globe Denialists. Of course, you can say that these are just labels, they don't mean anything, I am just overthinking this, but after George Orwell, I think we should've learned that everyday language matters a great deal. Labels are a convenient propaganda tool precisely because they enable this form of denial.
Furthermore, I do not know of any reputable professor of economics, biology or geography who wants to kill any of the aforementioned groups, no matter how nasty they can be towards fringe groups (justified or not), but climate c>at least one professor has talked about murdering "climate change deniers". He was not a climatologist (which makes it worse in some ways), and he was disciplined for it by his university, but he still holds tenure, from all I know. That he even thought he could get away with uttering death threats shows just how political the topic has become. (Professor Parncutt has claimed on his personal site - which I will not direct any traffic to - that it was all an elaborate, sarcastical ruse. His main argument seems to be that it was too audacious to be genuine. Having read his original text and found no indications of sarcasm or even a sense of humor, and knowing that Hitlers or Abimael Guzmáns rhetoric was easily as audacios, I will say that the only thing Parncutt has refuted is the existence of his spine.) A reputable climatologist such as Judith Curry has talked about how political climate science has become. To quote from the article:
Judith Curry holds a PhD in geophysical sciences, has served on the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee, worked together with NASA, has published well over a hundred papers, and earned awards from the American Meteorological Society. You'd think that would make people listen to her, but I am fairly sure at least one person reading this will think about disproving her very existence.
The point of all this babbling has been that we should maybe start trusting our own judgement again, instead of endlessly repeating the 97% myth. At the very least, so many papers have arrived at different conclusions as to the consensus that we should question the very existence of a consensus. Forbes and National Review have both listed a number of papers arriving at different numbers. Furthermore, numerous scientists have come out to say that Cook et al., the famous 97%-paper, has misclassified them.
To close this topic, I recommend The Hockey Stick Illusion to anyone who needs more proof that climate science has become deeply political. Montfort talks at length about the perversion of the peer review process from a check on the formalities of a paper (this, and only this, was its original purpose!) to a form of content-control that serves to censor minority views; the clustering of "reputable" climatologists around a single person; the intransparent metholodogy behind the famous "hockey stick graph", including the staunch refusal of its creator to share either his data or his algorithm; the limitations of temperature proxies; and the dishonest conduct of his critics both online and in panel debates.
I will not say more about the science behind Anthropogenic Climate Change, for now, not the least because my sources here already include more information than I could relay in a simple review.
Atrocious Style
I have saved this for last, as I wanted to discuss substance before style. That does not mean I don't think the stylistical issues of this book are insignificant.
I go to church and hear sermons every sunday, I have heard my shares of secular speeches, and I have systematically studied numerous speeches made during the Nazi Era, both from resistance figures and from the Nazis themselves. I would never call myself an expert on speeches, but I am not a complete newbie, either. The format and occasion of a speech imposes certain limitations, so that a compilation of them in a book may end up looking sillier than the speeches themselves were. Numerous people in comment sections under reviews of this book have pointed this out to excuse Thunbergs frequent repetitions. I can see the merit in this argument, but I do not consider it an excuse. Thunberg does not merely repeat a few expressions, she repeats whole sentences, and she does that not once or twice, but numerous times, even when paraphrasing them would have been possible:
This sentence occurs twice.
Three minimal variations ofwhat is substantially the exact same sentence. I dare say that putting in a "just...", or an "and" before a clause, or replacing "A lot" with "Many" is the kind of minimal change your brain probably won't even notice. She never used the word "tiny", "insignificant" or "remote" instead of "small", or expressed the last part as "our actions amount to nothing", "we cannot change anything", or even "what we do doesn't matter".
This exact sentence I found thrice, with absolutely zero modification. Not just that, the sentence is imprecise. What "survival" are we speaking of here? Are there no grey areas when it comes to the sruvival of mankind, or is everything allowed when my life is threatened? Does the good of the many outweigh the interests of the few, or should mankind survive as a species at all costs, even if the majority die? Yes, these distinctions are very philosophical, and more nuanced than I would expect from a teenager. My point is that with the exact sentence repeated three times, Thunberg had the opportunity to explore the concept a little bit further each time. She didn't.
I wrote those down word for word from different speeches, I carefully tried to ensure I did not accidentally copy the same thing twice, or that I copied what I had just copied from the book. There are variations of these words, but they are not helping matters. To quote just one:
There are more such repetitions, but I will stop here. They are jarring, and, like I said, would be so easy to avoid that the speech-format is no excuse for them, especially as the book is quite short. This is not the corpus of a Goethe or a Shakespeare, of whom you could probably assemble a similar catalogue if you tried, by virtue of them having written ten thousands of pages. This books comes to less than a hundredth of that.
Final Verdict
It's a bad book. Read something else.
Greta Thunberg is an entitled little girl who regularly skips her special education school that children in poorer countries could only dream of visiting, who blanket-insults and guilttrips her entire audience, throws fits during public speeches, who has arrogated to herself the position of chief spokesperson of global autism (not all autists like that), who tries to push the most bland socialism you can think of despite probably never having read an economics textbook in her life, and who couldn't give less of a damn about the developing world, who still need those nasty fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty.
I see environmentalism as the reaction of modern man to the fact that there are no more sins to atone for. Every lifestyle is as good as any other, talk of virtues has practically disappeared from our language (who knows the adjective for "fortitude"?), religion is a private matter and makes no demands on you or anyone. Yet in our hearts, we know we are sinful, whether we call it that or not. Pre-Christian man knows it as well as Post-Christian man. So we created new sins, and new forms of chastisement (like veganism).
Doesn't the Science agree with her?
This is probably what should make up the bulk of the conversation, yet doesn't. I can already hear the objections: "Unanimous agreement", "scientific consensus", "all the experts agree"... look, science is not a democracy. The truth is not a democracy. I get that as a layperson, you cannot evaluate all the claims for yourself, you have to rely on some authority, and that authority may as well be the majority of all scientists. I don't know how precisely physicists determined that the speed of light, but I trust that they aren't all wrong about that.
Thunberg is entirely correct when she says that we cannot discuss climate change anymore, but for all the wrong reasons. It is not that the research is unanimous, it is that the methodology of both decisionmakers and activists does not allow for dissent. If you deny climate change, nay, if you question climate change, you are hit with arguments from authority and arguments from majority, no matter what science you bring up. Quite often, in addition to that, you are also called a puppet or a benefactor of the carbon industry, greedy, an overall bad, spoiled and pampered person who hates the environment, children, and probably puppies. To get to the point where we can even discuss the scientific aspect, you first have to defend your character against such attacks, which is hard enough to do. Then, you have to show that the research is not as unanimous and uncontroversial as the climate activists claim. And afterwards, you have to defend your sources for climate change not being real, or climate change being beneficial, or climate change not being mainly or at all anthropogenic, from the same kind of character attacks. Once you have done all that, you are still ignored. Too bad.
And this brings me back to science not being a democracy. It is not an appeal for everyone to completely disregard majority opinions, or the opinions of established authorities in the field, as if they didn't matter at all. They do matter a great deal, and it is reasonable to look at them as trustworthy until proven otherwise, especially if you cannot make an educated judgement of your own. However, because they are not infallible, and in fact have spectacularly erred in the past, you shouldn't completely suspend your own judgement. Trusting the authorities is a form of rational ignorance, but it becomes irrational when it concerns a matter of life and death, when you have the means and the talent to educate yourself (which I suppose Goodreads-members have), and when the authorities have shown themselves to be mistaken or corrupt. That climatologists can be mistaken is shown in the link above. That they are corrupt is of course a heavy charge, but let me remind you that it doesn't have to mean that they are bribed. Putting public renown, academic credentials even your own ego in the pursuit of truth is itself a form of corruption, and given that, we can safely say that climate science - despite Thunbergs uninformed and naive claims to the contrary - is in fact corrupted. My impression is that it has become more politicized than even economics! Isn't it odd that the term "denialist" is used for people who deny the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide... and Anthropogenic Climate Change? Austrian Economists or Creationists, two fringe groups in academia if there are any, are still given labels that do not evoke the Holocaust. Even Flat Eathers are not called Globe Denialists. Of course, you can say that these are just labels, they don't mean anything, I am just overthinking this, but after George Orwell, I think we should've learned that everyday language matters a great deal. Labels are a convenient propaganda tool precisely because they enable this form of denial.
Furthermore, I do not know of any reputable professor of economics, biology or geography who wants to kill any of the aforementioned groups, no matter how nasty they can be towards fringe groups (justified or not), but climate c>at least one professor has talked about murdering "climate change deniers". He was not a climatologist (which makes it worse in some ways), and he was disciplined for it by his university, but he still holds tenure, from all I know. That he even thought he could get away with uttering death threats shows just how political the topic has become. (Professor Parncutt has claimed on his personal site - which I will not direct any traffic to - that it was all an elaborate, sarcastical ruse. His main argument seems to be that it was too audacious to be genuine. Having read his original text and found no indications of sarcasm or even a sense of humor, and knowing that Hitlers or Abimael Guzmáns rhetoric was easily as audacios, I will say that the only thing Parncutt has refuted is the existence of his spine.) A reputable climatologist such as Judith Curry has talked about how political climate science has become. To quote from the article:
This brings us to why Curry left the world of the academy and government-funded research. “Climatology has become a political party with totalitarian tendencies,” she charges. “If you don’t support the UN consensus on human-caused global warming, if you express the slightest skepticism, you are a ‘climate-change denier,’ a stooge of Donald Trump, a quasi-fascist who must be banned from the scientific community.” These days, the climatology mainstream accepts only data that reinforce its hypothesis that humanity is behind global warming. Those daring to take an interest in possible natural causes of climactic variation—such as solar shifts or the earth’s oscillations—aren’t well regarded in the scientific community, to put it mildly. The rhetoric of the alarmists, it’s worth noting, has increasingly moved from “global warming” to “climate change,” which can mean anything. That shift got its start back in 1992, when the UN widened its range of environmental concern to include every change that human activities might be causing in nature, casting a net so wide that few human actions could escape it[...]What could lead climate scientists to betray the very essence of their calling? The answer, Curry contends: “politics, money, and fame.” Scientists are human beings, with human motives; nowadays, public funding, scientific awards, and academic promotions go to the environmentally correct. Among climatologists, Curry explains, “a person must not like capitalism or industrial development too much and should favor world government, rather than nations”; think differently, and you’ll find yourself ostracized. “Climatology is becoming an increasingly dubious science, serving a political project,” she complains. In other words, “the policy cart is leading the scientific horse.”
Judith Curry holds a PhD in geophysical sciences, has served on the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee, worked together with NASA, has published well over a hundred papers, and earned awards from the American Meteorological Society. You'd think that would make people listen to her, but I am fairly sure at least one person reading this will think about disproving her very existence.
The point of all this babbling has been that we should maybe start trusting our own judgement again, instead of endlessly repeating the 97% myth. At the very least, so many papers have arrived at different conclusions as to the consensus that we should question the very existence of a consensus. Forbes and National Review have both listed a number of papers arriving at different numbers. Furthermore, numerous scientists have come out to say that Cook et al., the famous 97%-paper, has misclassified them.
To close this topic, I recommend The Hockey Stick Illusion to anyone who needs more proof that climate science has become deeply political. Montfort talks at length about the perversion of the peer review process from a check on the formalities of a paper (this, and only this, was its original purpose!) to a form of content-control that serves to censor minority views; the clustering of "reputable" climatologists around a single person; the intransparent metholodogy behind the famous "hockey stick graph", including the staunch refusal of its creator to share either his data or his algorithm; the limitations of temperature proxies; and the dishonest conduct of his critics both online and in panel debates.
I will not say more about the science behind Anthropogenic Climate Change, for now, not the least because my sources here already include more information than I could relay in a simple review.
Atrocious Style
I have saved this for last, as I wanted to discuss substance before style. That does not mean I don't think the stylistical issues of this book are insignificant.
I go to church and hear sermons every sunday, I have heard my shares of secular speeches, and I have systematically studied numerous speeches made during the Nazi Era, both from resistance figures and from the Nazis themselves. I would never call myself an expert on speeches, but I am not a complete newbie, either. The format and occasion of a speech imposes certain limitations, so that a compilation of them in a book may end up looking sillier than the speeches themselves were. Numerous people in comment sections under reviews of this book have pointed this out to excuse Thunbergs frequent repetitions. I can see the merit in this argument, but I do not consider it an excuse. Thunberg does not merely repeat a few expressions, she repeats whole sentences, and she does that not once or twice, but numerous times, even when paraphrasing them would have been possible:
The year 2078 I will celebrate my seventy-fifth birthday.
This sentence occurs twice.
A lot of people say that Sweden is a small country, that it doesn't matter what we do.
A lot of people say that Sweden is just a small country, and that it doesn't matter what we do.
Many people say that Sweden is just a small country and it doesn’t matter what we do.
Three minimal variations ofwhat is substantially the exact same sentence. I dare say that putting in a "just...", or an "and" before a clause, or replacing "A lot" with "Many" is the kind of minimal change your brain probably won't even notice. She never used the word "tiny", "insignificant" or "remote" instead of "small", or expressed the last part as "our actions amount to nothing", "we cannot change anything", or even "what we do doesn't matter".
There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.
This exact sentence I found thrice, with absolutely zero modification. Not just that, the sentence is imprecise. What "survival" are we speaking of here? Are there no grey areas when it comes to the sruvival of mankind, or is everything allowed when my life is threatened? Does the good of the many outweigh the interests of the few, or should mankind survive as a species at all costs, even if the majority die? Yes, these distinctions are very philosophical, and more nuanced than I would expect from a teenager. My point is that with the exact sentence repeated three times, Thunberg had the opportunity to explore the concept a little bit further each time. She didn't.
And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris Agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.
And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris Agreement work on a global scale, nor do they include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.
I wrote those down word for word from different speeches, I carefully tried to ensure I did not accidentally copy the same thing twice, or that I copied what I had just copied from the book. There are variations of these words, but they are not helping matters. To quote just one:
Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing Arctic Permafrost.
There are more such repetitions, but I will stop here. They are jarring, and, like I said, would be so easy to avoid that the speech-format is no excuse for them, especially as the book is quite short. This is not the corpus of a Goethe or a Shakespeare, of whom you could probably assemble a similar catalogue if you tried, by virtue of them having written ten thousands of pages. This books comes to less than a hundredth of that.
Final Verdict
It's a bad book. Read something else.
June 4, 2019
I applaud Greta Thunberg. A short, sobering, necessary read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,520 reviews