Greta Thunberg: ‘How dare you’

The most pointed and powerful words spoken as the decade ends were uttered by a Swedish 16-year-old. We all heard them, or heard about them.

“How dare you…” has echoed through the corridors of the United Nations and around the world. Greta Thunberg, who turned 17 on Jan. 3, has been much in the public eye ever since.

A Nobel Prize nomination and a Person-of-the-year on the cover of Time magazine are acknowledgement of the poignant profoundness of her words. They are a telling response to the climate crisis in the dying days of a decade and the primary challenge of the new decade opening before us.

Back in 2011, as an eightyear-old, Thunberg heard about climate change and was bewildered as to why more wasn’t being done. It so depressed her that for some time she did not speak and lost weight. In 2018 she began the school climate strikes. Young people resonated with what she was saying and doing, and a movement was begun. Youth understand the crisis at a depth that eludes most of us.

Greta was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, OCD and selective mutism. However, she does not view it as an illness and has instead called it her “superpower.”

People with Asperger’s may have an area of intellectual ability that astounds us; we have seen it in mathematical feats. For Greta, it is a supreme ability to focus and become acutely aware of the looming catastrophe of a warming planet. She sees it with a pure intensity and has the ability and courage to put her total awareness into concise and telling words.

Her words to the United Nations Assembly, the gathered leaders of the world, exposed the heart of the crisis.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”

She has her critics, of course. The best known is President Donald Trump’s response to her being named Person-of-theyear. “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good oldfashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”

How demeaning and insulting can you get? And many national leaders and others see her as unaware of the complexity of the world.

Politicians have a point. The world is complex and they are the ones who must deal with it. But behind complexity there is simplicity. In the midst of trying to bring about some significant change there must be a clear-eyed vision, some simple statement of the reality we face. Greta and today’s youth are providing what is needed. In the midst of the multiple pressures to do this or that to meet the demands of various industries and groups it is easy to veer off and do little or nothing. Youth see that it is the earth and their future that is at stake. Nothing can take away that reality.

I recently heard an Indigenous woman say, “You can’t negotiate with nature.” That truth must be the bottom line in all political and corporate decisions. We are the servants of the earth, not its master.

That requires a fundamental change in the dominant mythology of the west. Greta nailed it in her UN speech: “All you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” What must sink in is that eternal economic growth is a fairy tale which leads us to our desecration of the earth.

Change is happening. We are all more aware. I think of my friend, Ralph Martin, retired agriculture professor at University of Guelph. He is sharing his knowledge regarding food and the future. His book is “Food Security,” at www.ralphmartin.ca. And in an article, “A Business Case for Reducing Greenhouse Gases,” he refers to companies that are doing just that. https://www. guelphmercury.com/opinionstory/9794781-a-business-casefor-reducing-greenhouse-gases.

And Ralph is one of many. Human creativeness is at work.

But the vision, the truth, stands. “How dare you,” reverberates through all aspects of our lives. The central issue of the decade has been clearly stated.

May we all respond as we can, and beyond what we can.