Sheer Delight: The Permanent Frustration of Greta the Scold
I'm going to say what the mainstream media refuse to say. Greta Thunberg is a whining, emotionally handicapped twit.
The global warmers have selected as their spokesperson an unattractive teenager who suffers from Asperger's syndrome. Asperger's syndrome is an affliction in which sufferers do not perceive the subtleties of social interaction.
This can be an advantage. Some of them are quite focused. They can become highly skilled at narrow tasks.
She tries to put on a good face about her affliction. We read this in the left-wing British newspaper, The Guardian:
Greta Thunberg has spoken about her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis after she was criticised over the condition, saying it makes her a “different”, but that she considers it a “superpower”.Thunberg, the public face of the school climate strike movement said on Twitter that before she started her climate action campaign she had “no energy, no friends and I didn’t speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder.”
She said she had not been open about her diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum in order to “hide” behind it, but because she knew “many ignorant people still see it as an ‘illness’, or something negative”.
“When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go. And then you know you’re winning!” she wrote, using the hashtag #aspiepower
She really does think she is winning. The handlers around her try to persuade her that she is winning. This is why I don't hate Greta. I rejoice in Greta. Greta is living proof that the global warmers are themselves afflicted with a kind of collective social Asperger's. They don't recognize that they are beginning to alienate the voters they are trying to persuade to come out in favor of massive government controls over manufacturing.
It is not a good idea to get a socially inept young woman of exceedingly plain features to represent a movement. This was tested half a century ago. The feminists had two major spokeswomen: one of the ugliest women in the world and one of the best looking. The ugly woman was an ex-Stalinist, Betty Friedan. She wrote the feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique. It was published in early 1963. In 1964, it became the best-selling nonfiction book in America. The gorgeous woman was Gloria Steinem. Television talk show hosts invited Gloria, not Betty, to make the case for feminism. Nobody in the general public wanted to listen to Betty, and men surely didn't want to look at her. Gloria Steinem got a lot more converts among men than Betty Friedan.
I remember the day Friedan died. That was a great day. I wrote about it here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/19350.cfm.
2020 HINDSIGHT: 1992
The global warming movement has never had anybody as attractive as Gloria Steinem to go on the evening talk shows. The movement has had to rely on other promoters.
Back in 1992, they had the equivalent of Greta. Here is a video of the young lady.
She was intense. She spoke as if she were an expert. She was confident in her own importance. In short, she was Greta, 1992. She didn't suffer from Asperger's, however. And, mercifully, she soon went away. It does not look as though Greta is going to go away soon.
DAVOS, ACT 2
This week, Greta spoke at the Davos meeting in Switzerland. Here, the richest and most powerful people on earth meet once a year to rub shoulders with each other, do deals, and feel important because just they are there. The guy who runs the World Economic Forum decided to get even with these people. He inflicted another round of Greta on them. He did it last year, too. In my view, they deserve it. All of them. Yes, even President Trump, who also showed up.
Greta went through her usual schtick: "outraged teenager who speaks for the outraged teenagers of the world." She gave them a verbal trouncing, just as she did at last year's meeting. She gave them such a good verbal trouncing in 2019 that the global warmers decided to use her as their official spokeswoman. She became Time magazine's person of the year. CNN reports:
"Pretty much nothing has been done since the global emissions of CO2 has not reduced," Thunberg said. "[I]f you see it from that aspect, what has concretely been done, if you see it from a bigger perspective, basically nothing ... it will require much more than this, this is just the very beginning." . . ."I don't think I have seen one media outlet or person in power communicating this or what it means. I know you don't want to report on this. I know you don't want to talk about this. But I assure you I will continue to repeat these numbers until you do."
In a panel discussion with other teenage experts, she said this: "I'm not the person who can complain about not being heard — I'm being heard all the time." How true, how true!
This girl has Asperger's. She doesn't perceive the extent to which she is being used by political ideologues. She doesn't perceive that all the adoration from the global warmers will not lead to controls on carbon dioxide emissions. She doesn't perceive that the whole movement is a hopeless public relations stunt. Why hopeless? Because no government will surrender sovereignty to the United Nations on the issue of carbon emissions.
If she is dragged out of well-deserved obscurity a decade from now or two decades from now, which seems highly unlikely, she will give the same tirades that she gives now. Nothing will have been done two decades from now, any more than anything has been done over the last year.
Greta put a timeline on all this. "Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels. We don't want these things done by 2050, or 2030 or even 2021 — we want this done now." She speaks for all youth around the world. If you don't believe me, listen to what she says. She really does think that she is the representative of an entire generation.
Meanwhile, around the world, teenagers want to get into school if they aren't in one, and they want to get out of school if they are. They want to get dates with good-looking people of the opposite sex. They want to get after-school jobs.
If you want to find out what the masses of teenagers want in India and in sub-Saharan Africa, ask them whether they would like to see global warming ended or whether they would like to see Google, Facebook, and Amazon provide free Wi-Fi based on stratospheric balloons. You will find out how committed they are to global warming.
Greta and her handlers seem blissfully unaware of this social reality. So, she issued her usual warning: "Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else."
The billionaires will go home from Davos, and they will do this year what they did last year to fight global warming: nothing that costs them a dime.
OUT OF GAS
The longer that the Left clings to this issue, which inherently cannot be solved by governments, and which doesn't actually exist as a threat to society, the better it is for the rest of us. The more the lines of copy in newspapers, and the more time devoted on primetime television news to this issue, the less anything else in the Left's agenda is going to get done. The Left's agenda is gridlocked around the world. Global warming is an inherently gridlocked political issue. If one nation imposes tight controls, China is going to continue to pollute, and will therefore be able to sell lower-priced manufactured goods in the nation whose legislature has imposed tight restrictions on CO2 emissions. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air will not decline, but employment in manufacturing in the nations that impose CO2 emissions will decline.
We are not dealing with a special-interest group whose agenda is on the ascendancy. Back in 1992 in Kyoto, they thought it was. They brought out that generation's version of Greta, and she harangued the assembled bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats are now retired. They are collecting their large pensions. They didn't do anything then; they didn't do anything for the next two decades. They served their time, collected their above-market salaries, and enjoyed the good life that is made possible by CO2 emissions.
Their successors are trying to run the same game plan that they did in 1992. But, these days, the warnings fall on increasingly deaf ears. We were told in 1992 by a 12-year-old that time was running out. It is now 28 years later, and we are told by a teenager that time is running out. Why should we believe her? We didn't believe the other one. We were wise not to believe the other one. We are a lot richer today than we were in 1992. The oceans have not risen as a result of the melting ice caps. Greenland is still covered in ice. Iceland is still above water. The polar bears are still eating the seals. There are more polar bears today than in 1981.
So, let us enjoy Greta for as long as we can. Let us be reminded, tirade by tirade, that the global warmers really are out of political gas. If they have to use this whining teenager as their primary spokesman, they are on the downside of their influence.