Humbled, in awe of young Greta

Bob Hughes

Opinion

In my “You can't bargain with climate change” piece (January 10) I mentioned our brave teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg had condemned our leaders for failing us.

She has also rightly blamed the climate crisis on adults who don't give a damn. Hard stuff to swallow for some, I must say. No wonder so many get angry.

Since Greta began hitting the world headlines she has made a lot of enemies. They are easy to recognise because their rage is so great they cannot help making themselves look ridiculous.

A good number of times during the past three years a handful of her haters have been linking her name to mine here like the guy who calls me “the doomsday prophet Bob, the ‘Greta' of Gisborne”, who responded to my recent column, claiming I was “preaching as a Thunberg-type activist”. I don't mind if trying to get an important message across is preaching. I stand guilty as charged.

It does seem strange I should be compared to little Greta. She is a female teenager and I'm a frail male coming up 90 — a 70-year age gap.

In truth, I'm honoured with the perceived likeness, humbled and in awe of the young lady for what she has achieved in only a few short years.

She has made herself the most visible climate change activist in the world. For this she has to endure hate and the constant barrage of personal attacks, as well as the hidden hostility that all activists must suffer. All this despite her autism, which she bravely calls her strength.

As the so-called “Greta of Gisborne”, I better understand a little of what she suffers, but what grieves me most is the deliberate avoidance of the issue that I must face. I know we both push for climate change awareness, not because it's especially interesting, but because it is a matter of life and death.

Why I admire her so —

In August 2018, Greta walked out of school and with only her Skolstrelk for Klimatete banner, she sat down at the entrance of Sweden's parliament building in protest. Her parents tried to dissuade her but she wasn't going to return to school until the adults of the world began working to end the climate crisis.

Her actions inadvertently started a global movement calling out us oldies for our ignorance, neglect and inaction. Still, because people don't want to hear what she has to say, knowing how vulnerable this makes her to attack, she remains strong to the cause.

Greta knows she makes herself an easy target by expounding unwanted, undesirable truths, and arguing for immediate action. Giving up is never an option.

“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,” she told the corporate, political and civil society leaders gathered at Davos in 2019.

Greta, myself and all who have been through the stages of climate grief know the end of our world is not some far-off threat. It is near, unless humanity very soon recognises our dire situation and we all act accordingly.

I conclude with this quote from James Hansen, who in 1988 alerted the US Congress that climate change had arrived.

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current level (now 417ppm) to at most 350ppm.”