SEPTEMBER 24, 2019 – In case you haven’t already heard it, you must listen to the speech of Greta Thunberg (pronounced, TŪN-berry) at the UN Climate Change Summit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAJsdgTPJpU Her words and delivery smack you directly between the ears—where the brain resides. As she cuts to the quick, you remind yourself, “To travel from her home in Sweden to New York, this 16-year old—16-year old!—crossed the North Atlantic on a wind-driven vessel fitted with solar panels and a hydro-generator.” In other words, her money is where her mouth is.
To be clear, each of us is part of the problem. Driving a car, eating anything that didn’t come from the backyard garden; buying anything that you wear; living inside a structure that is air-conditioned in summer and heated in winter; using your phone, tablet, laptop, computer . . . all of this consumption contributes directly or indirectly to the accelerating problem. But here and now arrives a person who scolds and scares us to action.
At least that’s her fervent message. Will we listen? Will we demand action by our leaders? Will our leaders lead? Or like playground rascals temporarily cornered by the playground proctor, will we simply cower, avert our eyes, cross one foot over the other, say “Sorry,” meekly without meaning it, then, when the bell rings, escape the proctor’s glare and make a bee-line for the schoolhouse?
Now enter the current president of the United States of Astonishment. An insecure, malicious, out-of-control playground bully who insists on breaking all the environmental china that he can get his hands on. Why? Because his leading policy question is “WDOD?”—“What did Obama do?” and his only answer is, “The exact opposite.” And “Why?” again? Because at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, a function at which humor was by tradition, the express centerpiece, Obama told a clever birther-joke at the current president’s expense. In other words, the president’s motivation is so off the rails, he doesn’t even really care about the bottom line of other bullies who would benefit (short-term) from his bully behavior!
Now tell me, sycophantic Republicans (pardon the redundancy), who is the adult in the room—the 73-year old man obsessed with self and no else or the 16-year old girl whose voice and actions speak to all of humanity, present and future?
But we must extend the question to all of us on the playground. Who is the biggest, bravest adult—any one of us who is viscerally anti-Republican, woefully aware of climate change but still wallowing in our habitual mud bath of over-consumption (sorry, recycling doesn’t count; nor does owning a Prius or Tesla)—OR that 16-year old girl who dared cross the Atlantic in a totally “green” boat to deliver a pressing message to all of humanity?
Every single one of us needs to look the playground proctor in the eye. Every single one of us needs to say, “Sorry” and mean it. Every single one of us needs to be an adult and join the growing crowd of children led by 16-year old Greta Thunberg.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
