Here is what Greta Thunberg said, speaking during a rally in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 5, 2021:
It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure.
It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place. And more and more people are starting to realize this.
Many are starting to ask themselves, “What will it take for the people in power to wake up?” But let’s be clear: They are already awake.
They know exactly what they are doing. They know exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to maintain business as usual. The leaders are not doing nothing; they are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves and to continue profiting from this destructive system.
It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place. And more and more people are starting to realize this.
Many are starting to ask themselves, “What will it take for the people in power to wake up?” But let’s be clear: They are already awake.
They know exactly what they are doing. They know exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to maintain business as usual. The leaders are not doing nothing; they are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves and to continue profiting from this destructive system.
This is an active choice by the leaders to continue to let the exploitation of people and nature and the destruction of present and future living conditions to take place.
The COP has turned into a PR event where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains the governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.
It seems like their main goal is to continue to fight for the status quo. And COP26 has been named the most exclusionary COP ever. This is not a conference. This is now a Global North greenwash festival, a two-week-long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah.
The most affected people in the most affected areas still remain unheard, and the voices of future generations are drowning in their greenwash and empty words and promises.
But the facts do not lie, and we know that our emperors are naked. To stay below the targets set in the Paris Agreement, and thereby minimizing the risks of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control, we need immediate, drastic, annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
And as we don’t have the technological solutions that alone will do anything even close to that, that means we will have to fundamentally change our society.
And this is the uncomfortable result of our leaders’ repeated failure to address this crisis. At the current emissions rates, our remaining CO2 budgets to give us the best chances of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius will be gone within the end of this decade.
And the climate and ecological crisis, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is directly tied to other crises and injustices that date back to colonialism and beyond, crises based on the idea that some people are worth more than others, and therefore had the right to steal others — to exploit others and to steal their land and resources.
And it is very naive of us to think that we could solve this crisis without addressing the root cause of it.
It seems like their main goal is to continue to fight for the status quo. And COP26 has been named the most exclusionary COP ever. This is not a conference. This is now a Global North greenwash festival, a two-week-long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah.
The most affected people in the most affected areas still remain unheard, and the voices of future generations are drowning in their greenwash and empty words and promises.
But the facts do not lie, and we know that our emperors are naked. To stay below the targets set in the Paris Agreement, and thereby minimizing the risks of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control, we need immediate, drastic, annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
And as we don’t have the technological solutions that alone will do anything even close to that, that means we will have to fundamentally change our society.
And this is the uncomfortable result of our leaders’ repeated failure to address this crisis. At the current emissions rates, our remaining CO2 budgets to give us the best chances of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius will be gone within the end of this decade.
And the climate and ecological crisis, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is directly tied to other crises and injustices that date back to colonialism and beyond, crises based on the idea that some people are worth more than others, and therefore had the right to steal others — to exploit others and to steal their land and resources.
And it is very naive of us to think that we could solve this crisis without addressing the root cause of it.
But this is not going to be spoken about inside the COP. It’s just too uncomfortable. It’s much easier for them to simply ignore the historical debt that the countries of the Global North have towards the most affected people and areas.
And the question we must now ask ourselves is: What is it that we are fighting for?
Are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet, or are we fighting to maintain business as usual (emphasis added)?
And the question we must now ask ourselves is: What is it that we are fighting for?
Are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet, or are we fighting to maintain business as usual (emphasis added)?
oooOOOooo
My Comments:
I think Greta Thunberg has got it right.
I think Greta Thunberg is correct in saying that to "minimize the risks of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control," it is going to be necessary to make fundamental changes to our society.
About a week or so ago, I suggested that we should eliminate personal automobiles. I suggested that we had to share rides. That would be a fundamental change, and would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% to 40%. So, thinking just about that example, "are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet, or are we fighting to maintain business as usual?"
Yesterday, I wrote about Strauss and Howe, historians who predicted, thirty years ago, that the early 2020's would be "fateful." They said that they expected our society to face "a crisis
lasting from 2013 to 2024." Those predictions seem accurate, at least to me. We are living in fateful times, and the national election in 2024 will probably determine whether or not the United States of America continues as a country in which democratic self-government prevails.
I only hope that Strauss and Howe were also right in their prediction that
people who are my age, and those who are in what Strauss and Howe called the
"Millennial Generation," will in fact join forces to "demonstrate their
civic virtue, and will triumph over great adversity."
Strauss and Howe could have been talking about me (and others my age) and Greta Thunberg and her followers.
Actually, I think they were.
So, I guess it's up to us to ask ourselves, will it be fundamental change, or "business as usual and blah, blah, blah?"
So far, and it is not a secret, we have been willing to go with "blah, blah, blah!"
Image Credit:
https://www.axios.com/greta-thunberg-cop26-failure-climate-change-56f6ce05-8c54-4b74-9967-1647de60dc1a.html
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