My new hero: Greta Thunberg

As I get older I worry I’m becoming less hopeful about the future. What if we’re going to hell in a handbasket? In short order there’s going to be 9 billion of us in this matrix and I can’t help but feel that those pulling the strings on this planet have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo.

Occasionally though, someone shows up that reignites a feeling of activism that used to reside within me before I became completely repelled by Left wing politics.

With Woodstock being back in the news it’s reminded me just how similar the Boomers were to the current crop of idealistic young folk. They thought they could change the world with peace, love and a ton of acid.

And you can be as snarky and revisionist about Woodstock as you like, but there was something genuine in the event that serves as a metaphor for a generation – the very best of intent meets poor execution.

Now we have a new generation of younger activists. And love ‘em or loathe ‘em, they’ve got that real unhindered idealism that can only come from youth.

Have you been following Greta Thunberg’s story? This is a Swedish kid who has become a spokesman for environmental issues.

She’s only 16, yet she’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, has been on the cover of Time magazine and has met so many important global figures that I worry the rest of her life might seem dull. Talk about a real-deal influencer.

I know it shouldn’t matter but I like that she looks like a normal, everyday kid as well.

What she doesn’t look like is some vapid Instagram influencer who thinks another generic Insta-clone is what the world needs.

While our very-own Princeling Hazza has been in the media for flying about in a private jet while condescendingly lecturing us on the ills of climate change, Greta has been sailing across the Atlantic in a sailboat so modern that it seems more closely related to a spaceship than to say Cook’s Endeavour or Kupe’s canoe.

The theme of her trip is Unite Behind the Science and they’ve been putting up interesting factoids each day. How about this: Animal products cover only 17 per cent of human calorie requirements, but use 77 per cent of global arable land.

Here’s another one: No beef for a year can save 2.2 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. That’s roughly the same as filling 16.5 bathtubs with petrol and setting them all on fire. My dog’s gonna hate this one.

What to make of all this? In Iceland, they’re mourning the extinction of a glacier and scientists here are saying our glaciers aren’t long for this world either.

The rich western world’s watching a young scandi girl’s slow-motion invasion of the Americas by sailboat, hoping that somehow she’ll trigger the changes needed to keep the world as a nurturing place for life.

Here, spring’s almost in the air which means that around the country hundreds of thousands of unwanted male calves will be loaded into trucks for transport to slaughter, because their births are needed for us to have our milk and cheese.

Fonterra meantime is bombarding us with quality infomercials about how good their farmers are at what they do. Nobody in the world does it with less impact on climate.

Translated that means our dairy industry is the least bad of a bad lot. What a sorry state we find ourselves in.

But all it takes is some kid from Sweden to slap our faces and make us wake up.

So come on people: wake up.

Never before have I seen the floodlights switched on at 2pm.