Her being portrayed by the media or the memes as the "whiny girl seeking attention" is also worrying as well. It really distracts from the real issue and diminishes her work as well.
Regardless of your opinions about her specifically, it's a simple fact that positive societal change doesn't happen by asking nicely. Look at every civil rights movement ever. Nothing got done until people were inconvenienced and companies lost money.
No change doesn't happen by asking nicely, but I think some joined up thinking by these groups would get them further than performative protesting and getting arrested. If you want change then you lobby politicians on the positive benefits of change, and businesses on the potential profits to be had from implementing it.
But all the lobbying has already happened - for decades - and nothing has changed. Fossil fuel companies have poured in billions over the course of decades, and still are, to counter lobby and spread misinformation to keep the status quo.
You're only seeing the 'performative' protesting in the media and not the lobbying because it's easy to report on, but in reality this movement is on its last legs. It is THAT level of desperation now.
Do you think they'd still be protesting if the government actually implemented the policies brought forward by climate scientists decades ago?
Yeah that's bullshit. Society has been improving overall throughout history. Lots of positive change is brought about by people chasing bigger profits.
No offense. Just a genuine question. Where do activists like Greta get income or the money to travel or just for day to day living? Especially considering she has been doing this since a young age.
Pls don't take my comment as in a bad light. I'm the same age as her so I always wondered. The answer could be NGO's collecting donations but I'm not sure.
I bought her book so sure that helped. Give me a link and I will donate to. She doing good work. Wish she could be charge of her government. She the type of world leaders we need.
Organizations like Fridays for Future are funded by donations and part of the money goes towards protests and publicity. I assume they allocate some money to have these prominent people present.
It's a complaint many have with her. She comes from the same class of people that are responsible for most of the problems of the world. It's genuinely off-putting but there's really not that many choices out there for people with this amount of influence and money who are willing to take up this fight.
Greta Thunberg was detained by police at a demonstration in The Hague, in the Netherlands.
The climate activist was put in a bus by local police along with other protesters who tried to block a major highway into the city on Saturday.
Thunberg had joined a protest by hundreds of activists and was detained when she joined a group of about 100 people who tried to block the A12 highway.
Before she was detained, Thunberg said: “We are in a planetary emergency and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and be forced to become climate refugees when we can do something.”
The road has been blocked for several hours dozens of times in recent months by activists demanding an end to all subsidies for the use of fossil fuels.
Thunberg was seen flashing a victory sign as she sat in the bus used by police to take detained demonstrators from the scene.The Extinction Rebellion campaign group said before the demonstration that the activists would block a main highway into The Hague, but a heavy police presence, including officers on horseback, initially prevented the activists from getting on to the road.A small group of people managed to sit down on another road and were detained after ignoring police orders to leave.Extinction Rebellion activists have blocked the highway that runs past the temporary home of the Dutch parliament more than 30 times to protest against subsidies.The demonstrators waved flags and chanted: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”One held a banner reading: “This is a dead end street.”In February, Thunberg, 21, was acquitted by a court in London of refusing to follow a police order to leave a protest blocking the entrance to an oil and gas industry conference last year.Her activism has inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger efforts to fight the climate crisis since she began staging weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament in 2018.She has repeatedly been fined in Sweden and the UK for civil disobedience in connection with protests.
The original article contains 361 words, the summary contains 341 words. Saved 6%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A climate protester who is frequently arrested/detained due to protesting has been arrested/detained for protesting. This is the story every time she is arrested/detained.
Maybe I’m jaded, but, who cares? How is this world news?
I always ridiculed her, although secretly I admired her determination and also agreed with her aims.
Then she started her pro-Gaza ramblings. She clearly has no idea about history of the middle east and also can't classifiy current events. To noone's surprise as she has hardly visited school. She's also 20 now, so a full adult, she does not have this young-innocent-girl Jeanne d'Arc bonus anymore.
I think climate activists would just be better off doing what everyone else does - lobbying. Identify politicians who represent areas who would benefit from pollution controls, or green investment or whatever and push the message. Performative acts in front of cameras might feel good but it's a blunt tool to change policy. Some protestors such as "just stop oil" campaigners are so stupid that they actually help the causes they supposedly oppose.
Climate activists can lobby in person when available, taking time away from other things. Oil companies can hire armies of lobbyists - some of whom masquerading as "concerned citizens" - to overwhelm public hearings, buy out media companies to manipulate public opinion and engage in astroturfing campaigns, and directly sway politicians with legal bribery (deliberately being vague about the purpose of "gifts" to maintain the benefit of the doubt about there being any quid pro quo involved).
Lobbying effectively requires resources - namely capital - which oil companies have in abundance and climate activists do not. To suggest that climate activists should simply fight on their terms is ignorant at best and malicious at worst.
That's probably true, but, at least in the US, nothing will really move forward without the populace backing it (or not knowing about it to begin with). Otherwise, those politicians will never get elected again, and whatever climate policy they created will be negated by the new politician.
So it seems like she's trying to go the route of getting the populace backing first, and then she'll have that strength to draw on when dealing with politicians. A bunch more people at that point would be also calling for change, so she wouldn't have to do much convincing. The fear of losing their political standing would be the impetus for change.
In my particularly weird corner of the world, we are still trying to convince people that climate change is real. I can't imagine how much the deniers would freak out if their elected official backed something that they think doesn't exist.