Jason D. Hill writes an open letter to Greta Thunberg on Frontpagemag. I don’t why people write editorial pieces in the form of open letters since the intended recipient will almost certainly never see it. Why not just write a straight editorial? Still, Hill makes some very good points.
Greta Thunberg:
You have declared yourself a leader and said that your generation will start a revolution. You have comported yourself as a credentialed adult and climate change activist who has fearlessly addressed politicians and world leaders. You have dropped out of school and declared that there isn’t any reason to attend, or any reason for you to study since there will be no future for you to inherit. You have, rather than attend your classes, been leading Friday Climate Strikes for all students in your generation across the globe. Your attendance at oil pipelines has been striking. There, you unequivocally declare that all oil needs to remain in the ground where it belongs.
In September of 2019 you crossed the Atlantic in a “zero carbon” racing yacht that had no toilet and electric light on board. You made an impassioned plea at the United Nations in which you claimed that, “we have stolen your dreams and our childhood with our empty words.” You claimed that adults and world leaders come to young people for answers and explained in anger: “How dare you!” You claimed that we are failing you and that young people are beginning to understand our betrayal. You further declared that if we continue to fail your generation: “We will never forgive you.”
You have stated that you want us to panic, and to act as if our homes are on fire. You insist that rich countries must reduce to zero emissions immediately. In your speeches you attack economic growth and have stated that our current climate crisis is caused by “buying and building things.” You call for climate justice and equity, without addressing the worst polluter on the planet China; the country that is economically annexing much of Africa and Latin America. You dare not lecture Iran about its uranium projects — because that’s not part of the UN’s agenda, is it?
It is strange that these activists only harangue western countries, especially the United States, where carbon dioxide emissions have been falling. I guess they know that countries like China and Iran don’t care what they think. It is far easier to virtue signal by shaming the West.
First, we did not rob you of your childhood or of your dreams. You are the legatee of a magnificent technological civilization which my generation and the one before it and several others preceding it all the way to the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, bequeathed to you. That growth-driven, capitalist technological civilization has created the conditions for you to harangue us over our betrayal. It is a civilization that eradicated diseases such as small pox from the word, and that lifted millions out of abject poverty in a universe you think is dying and decaying. It assured you a life expectancy that exceeded that of your ancestors. Most likely by focusing on economic growth which you demonize, and scientific advancement, that civilization will further enhance a robust quality of life and health for your descendants.
Young people in the West like Greta Thunberg have absolutely no reason to feel frightened or pessimistic about the future. They are already living lives that kings during the Middle Ages would envy. They can grow up confident that they will never know famine. They do not need to fear dying from diseases like smallpox or plague. All over the world, the standard of living is rapidly improving, even in the poorest parts of the world. There is no reason to believe that the future will not be even brighter, provided the ecofascists don’t take over and undo the industrial revolution.
Here is a hard truth to ponder, Greta: if the great producers of this world whom you excoriate were to withdraw their productivity, wealth and talents—in short—their minds from the world today, your generation would simply perish. Why? Because as children you have done nothing as yet, with your lives besides being born. This is what we expect of children until such time as they can be producers by learning from their elders. You are understandably social and ecological ballast. You are not yet cognitively advanced to replicate the structures of survival of which you are the beneficiaries.
Why do we pay any attention at all to what children are saying? By definition, children are ignorant. They lack any real knowledge of the world. It is up to us, the adults to teach them about the world, not to indulge them by pretending they are saying something wise or profound or to use them as political props.
Yes, we have betrayed you: by capitulating the world of leadership to bored, attention-deficit children who spout bromides, platitudes and slogans that a rudderless and morally relativistic culture accepts because a significant number of its denizens have become intellectually bankrupt and morally lazy.
Greta Thunberg reminds me of Samantha Smith. Samantha Smith was a ten-year-old girl who wrote a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov when he succeeded Leonid Brezhnev in 1982. In her letter, she asked Mr. Andropov, why he wanted to conquer the United States. Andropov, a KGB man who had helped to brutally crush the Prague Spring and had persecuted dissidents in the Soviet Union, replied that, of course, the USSR had no such intentions. He only wanted peace and invited her to come to the Soviet Union. She accepted and became a “goodwill ambassador”, and a Soviet propaganda prop. Meanwhile, foolish adults interviewed her and solemnly intoned that a simple child could see what the adults could not.
Samantha Smith was only a child. She had little or no knowledge of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet government or of the Communist party’s aggressive commitment to spreading Communism worldwide. She knew nothing at all about international relations or the geopolitical realities that made nuclear disarmament extremely difficult and even undesirable. Anything she had to say on the state of Soviet-American relations was worthless. She would have been better served if she had stayed in school in the US and studied.
Likewise, Greta Thunberg knows nothing of climate science, the real science as opposed to the politicized nonsense the public is being fed. She knows nothing of the difficulties of ending fossil fuel use and has no idea that such a step would consign billions of the poorest people in the world to starvation. She has not the slightest idea just how good her life is. She has nothing worthwhile to say and would be better off going back to schools. ‘
Greta Thunberg cannot be blamed for her folly. She is only an ignorant child. It is the adults who are using her who should be ashamed of themselves.
David's Commonplace Book 