Greta’s odyssey Sailing into choppy waters
A year ago, she was an anonymous schoolgirl, said The Times. Now, Greta Thunberg is on her way to New York to attend the UN’s Climate Action Summit. The 16-year-old Swede – who in the past 12 months has addressed parliaments and been nominated for a Nobel Prize – is not flying across the Atlantic, however. True to her commitment to the zerocarbon cause, she set sail last week from Plymouth in a solar-powered yacht, for a two-week journey that will be far from comfortable. Crewed by two expert skippers, the 60ft Malizia II has no toilet, and no privacy in its cramped living quarters. In the US, Thunberg hopes to raise awareness of the climate “emergency” – but insists she does not expect to influence Donald Trump. The president has ignored most of the world’s scientists, she says. “So what could I say to change his mind?”
By sailing to the conference – an option she admits is not open to most – Thunberg avoided the hypocrisy charges that bedevil globe-trotting green activists, but vitriol is still coming her way, said the FT. An Australian columnist recently described her as a “deeply disturbed messiah”; in France, politicians labelled her “a prophetess in shorts”. She seems able to shrug off such attacks as mere distractions, which is as well because she’ll surely have a hard time in the US, where climate remains a deeply polarising issue. There as here, toxic libertarians detest being told what to do by anyone, let alone a woman, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Of course, there are legitimate arguments to be had about Thunberg’s call for drastic and immediate action, but these are giving way to something new – not so much denialism as “nihilism”. People may accept that “the planet is frying”, but they’re simply not willing to give up their foreign holidays and cars to stop it.
In Europe, activists are seeking to shame citizens into action, said Christopher Caldwell in The New York Times. In Germany, they call it
flugscham, flight-guilt. But this can only be effective if most ordinary people agree with the zero-carbon cause in principle, and it’s not clear that they do. Thunberg has a simple message, but its implications are complex – and she and others are refusing to engage with them. We don’t know what a low-carbon world would look like; it might have aspects that even greens would not welcome: the EU slashing emissions, for instance, is unlikely to be consistent with mass immigration. Climate change is a serious issue, but to insist that “we can’t wait” is to invite problems “just as grave”.