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Greta Thunberg is the global face of this movement and her presence is extremely influential. (Photo: Anders Hellberg/Effekt)
Who's Afraid of Greta Thunberg?
The character of Greta Thunberg is part of a polarised global confrontation regarding climate change. Despite what her critics may say, her speeches have contributed to social mobilisation and awareness of the climate crisis and the future of the planet.
Nov 03, 2019
Some are fascinated with her: they see her as a hero, as a Joan of Arc of modern times or as a Mafalda, with a political agenda to preserve planet Earth and as such, represents the younger generations as more intelligent than that of their parents. Others are angry: they see her as a naive puppet of opaque adult interests and they make fun of her.
Young ecologist, Greta Thunberg became a new global figure and depending on the political point of view of observers, she is either defended or hated. On September 20, 2019 the #FridaysforFuture movement, inspired and encouraged by the Swedish teenager, celebrated its largest mass mobilisation. In almost every country in the world, young people and adults took to the streets. It is estimated that about 4 million people mobilised around the world.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old student, has been known in Europe for around a year, but in the United States she has risen to fame over the past month. Many Americans first saw her when she appeared on the Trevor Noah Daily Show. There, she explained with her well know seriousness that the world has very little time left, precisely eight and a half years, because as of January 1, 2018, only 420 gigatons of carbon dioxide remained. Now there are only 360 gigatons left, and in eight and a half years this will run out if the current levels of emissions are maintained.
Despite her youth, Great Thunberg has become popular because of her knowledge of climate and environmental problems, for the firmness of her convictions and for the actions that she carries out. Commentators are sure that that is why she has become an icon.
The climate activist does not relate well to the irony of American television programs. When asked for her impression of New York when she arrived on the Malizia yacht, she replied that it smelled bad. Her lack of understanding of irony and her seriousness are probably related to her Asperger's syndrome (a condition she speaks openly about) and dose of Nordic frankness. All of these qualities have influenced the new environmental movement. It is a group that speaks very seriously and uses scientific research to support their arguments. It is, in fact, the antithesis of the ironic language used by generation X or millennials.
Greta Thunberg is the global face of this movement and her presence is extremely influential. In August 2019, when embarking on a trip from Europe to New York on a ship that doesn't produce carbon dioxide, she caused rage in the media and in the political world. Furthermore, her interventions at the World Climate Conference in Katowice (Poland) in December 2018 and at the World Economic Forum in Davos put the world's powerful in a very awkward position. This young girl, with her hair in braids threw slogans at them ("act" or "panic") and was able to attract the world's attention. Especially the European media. But her presence at the New York and Washington demonstrations, the meeting with Barack Obama, the appearance on the Daily Show and the speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23rd also made her a popular figure in the US.
The mass movement led by Great Thunberg dates back to the "school strike" that began on 20th August 2018. That day, instead of attending school, she sat in front of the Swedish Parliament in an attempt to draw attention to the dangers climate change represents for future generations. Her intervention produced an avalanche effect. In a few months a mass movement known as #FridaysforFuture emerged, reaching its first peak in March 2019 when 1.5 million teenagers and youngsters took to the streets to protest and demand a change in attitude to climate change. The movement is global, but its centre is in the Global North. And although in many countries the movement is led by teenage women, in no other country in the world is the symbiosis between the movement and a person is as clear as in the case of Greta Thunberg.
The activist triggered not only a political movement, but also fury from powerful media outlets. The media and commentators have become obsessed with her. According to some observers, the adoration towards Greta Thunberg is similar to a religious awakening. But this is not her problem. It is, on the contrary, a problem of the people and the media that react to her actions and her words. Within the political spectrum, environmentalism is found mostly on the left and in the academic world. The right and many liberals deny Greta Thunberg and her colleagues the right to formulate their own political ideas and goals, instead treating them as immature and spoilt. The Argentine journalist Sandra Russo calls this the first case of "global bullying", an idea which she discussed long before September 23rd when Donald Trump, the president of the United States, sent out a tweet which made fun of the 16 year old.
The criticism that Greta Thunberg's ideas about the climate would be potentially "undemocratic" since they do not allow for political compromise are based on the idea that politics works "only step by step, always through compromise". However, this can be seen as a form of soft paternalism. Greta Thunberg's sharp accusations do not take place in a vacuum, they are stark, political interventions aimed at polarizing public opinion. Her statement that "the poverty of the many pays for the luxury of the few", is according to some commentators on the extreme right, is "the product of socialisation in the Swedish education system" and is a stupid left wing criticism of capitalism.
Other critics argue that fanatical ecologists (or green capitalists) are hiding behind the young Swedish girl. More specifically, We Don't Have Time AB, a Swedish company that works on environmental projects founded in 2017, by public relations specialist Ingmar Rentzhog, who gave wide coverage to the school strikes led by Great Thunberg in 2018. On November 27 of that year, We Don't Have Time AB announced they were issuing securities on the stock exchange and mentioned her name 11 times in their advertising brochure. Earlier this year, she alongside her family said that they are no longer are in contact with the firm. Others point to the ever-present George Soros, the ghost of the global alternative right.
Everything seems to suggest that the more popular and disruptive the climate movement become, the more virulent the rejection from those who consider climate change as a conspiracy and the protection of the climate as pure nonsense becomes. The severity of reactions to a 16 year old teenager should make us reflect. Some psychologists try to explain it by saying the 'old' white men won't change their attitudes towards the environment, so instead attack Greta for her illness, for her age or because of the apparent manipulation of her activism. But behind these criticisms there is much more than the intransigence of a whole male generation. The attacks may be a sign that she, alongside the youth involved in the movement, have managed to hit a sensitive nerve. Is Greta Thunberg questioning the system?
At the climate conference held in Katowice in December 2018, the young Swedish woman stressed that political elites had not yet understood the severity of the climate crisis. Since the political class acts irresponsibly, it is up to the younger generations to take charge of their future and do what adult politics should have done a long time ago. Young people must understand what previous generations have done with climate change and respond to the chaos that have inherited. They need to ensure that their voices are heard.
In all of her speeches, Greta Thunberg makes it clear that if real and concrete measures are not taken to face the current situation, politicians will be acting irresponsibly. She maintains that rich nations have a greater obligation to reduce emissions quicker and that countries like Sweden should reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 15% annually and reduce their emissions to zero within six to twelve years. This would allow emerging economies such as India and Nigeria sufficient time to adapt their infrastructure.
The main concern of the #FridaysforFuture movement is, therefore, that climate protection measures be adapted in the widest, fastest and most efficient way possible. In order to achieve the objective of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a limit established at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change that was held in Paris in 2015 (COP 21) and adopted by the UN. These positions do not seem to question the system itself; they are simply a call to reason and for fulfilment of objectives that have already been established.
The power of persuasion of the movement doesn't come from theoretical positions (as in 1968), but from simply saying "what is happening". It comes from insisting on the fact that, as the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say, the climate crisis has worsened in last 20 years and, despite this, politics is doing very little to change its course. German climate movement activist Luisa Neubauer comments that "the battlefield is between those who benefit most from the status quo and those who are set to lose the most." And she adds: "We young people ask ourselves why things are the way they are when they could so simply be different? And we have to fight this as strongly as we can because we have absolutely nothing to lose, except our future".
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat.
In the movement, which is symbolized by Greta, there is potential for generational conflict: voters of the future are mobilizing against the interests of those of the present. But they are not alone and many adults are willing to change their behaviour and seek a change in policy, demonstrated by the large participation of adults in the demonstrations of September 20th.
Greta has managed to create mass mobilisation through her statements, actions in the public eye and intervention in the media. Its objective is not and cannot be to solve the climate crisis, but it has won a more immediate resounding political success: a generalised and global awareness of the urgency of climate change. What she says and what she does already influences political debates in different countries and first steps, although still tentative are being taken in the right direction. Without mobilisation, this would not be happening.
The European Green Party is one of the main beneficiaries of advertising the strikes and protests of the climate movement. In Germany, the Greens obtained 20.5% of the votes in the 2019 European elections with 33% of the votes of those under 30. The electoral behaviour of young people is not just an expression of their sympathy for the environmental cause; it is also a reflection of the deep crisis that German social democracy is going through. Many people see the same worries in both the #FridaysforFuture movement and the Greens, highlighting how far the party is from the radicalism expressed by its founders.
The fact that in the party congress of the Greens, their politicians applaud the critical position of the younger generation (which strongly rejects the decisions of the adult generation) could be seen as flattery and hopefully, will not subvert representative democracy.
Greta Thunberg and the new climate movement has created a new political actor. They will need a lot of patience to continue the campaign. The fascination with the novelty and personal magnetism will diminish and interest will weaken, as will the wave of sympathy. Traditional media and social media do not stick to the same story for long. Greta Thunberg will return to school. Her generation has a lifetime ahead, though this movement should become an example of democratic commitment. Hopefully most young people will say no to fatalism and resignation. There will come a point when we become aware that environmental issues cannot be resolved if we separate them from economic and social issues. They are inextricably linked and part of the same problem.
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat. The Swedish teenager announced in December 2019 she will travel from the United States to Chile for COP 25. We still don't know how she will make the trip without producing polluting emissions. The trip is further than her trip from Europe to New York and there are no train lines that connect to two areas. This, for now, remains unclear. Regardless, it is assumed that this new challenge will bring Greta closer to the enormous social problems of Latin America. The trip to Chile will open her eyes to a different reality, very different from the ones she knows, a reality that hopefully helps her to see more clearly the extent to which environmental and economic issues are two sides of the same coin. In New York, at the headquarters of the United Nations, she has already taken steps in this direction when she exclaimed with a trembling voice to the heads of states of the world:
"How dare you! [...] We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
An Unconstitutional Rampage
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Svenja Blanke
Svenja Blanke is the editor of the social science journal Nueva Sociedad based in Buenos Aires.
Some are fascinated with her: they see her as a hero, as a Joan of Arc of modern times or as a Mafalda, with a political agenda to preserve planet Earth and as such, represents the younger generations as more intelligent than that of their parents. Others are angry: they see her as a naive puppet of opaque adult interests and they make fun of her.
Young ecologist, Greta Thunberg became a new global figure and depending on the political point of view of observers, she is either defended or hated. On September 20, 2019 the #FridaysforFuture movement, inspired and encouraged by the Swedish teenager, celebrated its largest mass mobilisation. In almost every country in the world, young people and adults took to the streets. It is estimated that about 4 million people mobilised around the world.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old student, has been known in Europe for around a year, but in the United States she has risen to fame over the past month. Many Americans first saw her when she appeared on the Trevor Noah Daily Show. There, she explained with her well know seriousness that the world has very little time left, precisely eight and a half years, because as of January 1, 2018, only 420 gigatons of carbon dioxide remained. Now there are only 360 gigatons left, and in eight and a half years this will run out if the current levels of emissions are maintained.
Despite her youth, Great Thunberg has become popular because of her knowledge of climate and environmental problems, for the firmness of her convictions and for the actions that she carries out. Commentators are sure that that is why she has become an icon.
The climate activist does not relate well to the irony of American television programs. When asked for her impression of New York when she arrived on the Malizia yacht, she replied that it smelled bad. Her lack of understanding of irony and her seriousness are probably related to her Asperger's syndrome (a condition she speaks openly about) and dose of Nordic frankness. All of these qualities have influenced the new environmental movement. It is a group that speaks very seriously and uses scientific research to support their arguments. It is, in fact, the antithesis of the ironic language used by generation X or millennials.
Greta Thunberg is the global face of this movement and her presence is extremely influential. In August 2019, when embarking on a trip from Europe to New York on a ship that doesn't produce carbon dioxide, she caused rage in the media and in the political world. Furthermore, her interventions at the World Climate Conference in Katowice (Poland) in December 2018 and at the World Economic Forum in Davos put the world's powerful in a very awkward position. This young girl, with her hair in braids threw slogans at them ("act" or "panic") and was able to attract the world's attention. Especially the European media. But her presence at the New York and Washington demonstrations, the meeting with Barack Obama, the appearance on the Daily Show and the speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23rd also made her a popular figure in the US.
The mass movement led by Great Thunberg dates back to the "school strike" that began on 20th August 2018. That day, instead of attending school, she sat in front of the Swedish Parliament in an attempt to draw attention to the dangers climate change represents for future generations. Her intervention produced an avalanche effect. In a few months a mass movement known as #FridaysforFuture emerged, reaching its first peak in March 2019 when 1.5 million teenagers and youngsters took to the streets to protest and demand a change in attitude to climate change. The movement is global, but its centre is in the Global North. And although in many countries the movement is led by teenage women, in no other country in the world is the symbiosis between the movement and a person is as clear as in the case of Greta Thunberg.
The activist triggered not only a political movement, but also fury from powerful media outlets. The media and commentators have become obsessed with her. According to some observers, the adoration towards Greta Thunberg is similar to a religious awakening. But this is not her problem. It is, on the contrary, a problem of the people and the media that react to her actions and her words. Within the political spectrum, environmentalism is found mostly on the left and in the academic world. The right and many liberals deny Greta Thunberg and her colleagues the right to formulate their own political ideas and goals, instead treating them as immature and spoilt. The Argentine journalist Sandra Russo calls this the first case of "global bullying", an idea which she discussed long before September 23rd when Donald Trump, the president of the United States, sent out a tweet which made fun of the 16 year old.
The criticism that Greta Thunberg's ideas about the climate would be potentially "undemocratic" since they do not allow for political compromise are based on the idea that politics works "only step by step, always through compromise". However, this can be seen as a form of soft paternalism. Greta Thunberg's sharp accusations do not take place in a vacuum, they are stark, political interventions aimed at polarizing public opinion. Her statement that "the poverty of the many pays for the luxury of the few", is according to some commentators on the extreme right, is "the product of socialisation in the Swedish education system" and is a stupid left wing criticism of capitalism.
Other critics argue that fanatical ecologists (or green capitalists) are hiding behind the young Swedish girl. More specifically, We Don't Have Time AB, a Swedish company that works on environmental projects founded in 2017, by public relations specialist Ingmar Rentzhog, who gave wide coverage to the school strikes led by Great Thunberg in 2018. On November 27 of that year, We Don't Have Time AB announced they were issuing securities on the stock exchange and mentioned her name 11 times in their advertising brochure. Earlier this year, she alongside her family said that they are no longer are in contact with the firm. Others point to the ever-present George Soros, the ghost of the global alternative right.
Everything seems to suggest that the more popular and disruptive the climate movement become, the more virulent the rejection from those who consider climate change as a conspiracy and the protection of the climate as pure nonsense becomes. The severity of reactions to a 16 year old teenager should make us reflect. Some psychologists try to explain it by saying the 'old' white men won't change their attitudes towards the environment, so instead attack Greta for her illness, for her age or because of the apparent manipulation of her activism. But behind these criticisms there is much more than the intransigence of a whole male generation. The attacks may be a sign that she, alongside the youth involved in the movement, have managed to hit a sensitive nerve. Is Greta Thunberg questioning the system?
At the climate conference held in Katowice in December 2018, the young Swedish woman stressed that political elites had not yet understood the severity of the climate crisis. Since the political class acts irresponsibly, it is up to the younger generations to take charge of their future and do what adult politics should have done a long time ago. Young people must understand what previous generations have done with climate change and respond to the chaos that have inherited. They need to ensure that their voices are heard.
In all of her speeches, Greta Thunberg makes it clear that if real and concrete measures are not taken to face the current situation, politicians will be acting irresponsibly. She maintains that rich nations have a greater obligation to reduce emissions quicker and that countries like Sweden should reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 15% annually and reduce their emissions to zero within six to twelve years. This would allow emerging economies such as India and Nigeria sufficient time to adapt their infrastructure.
The main concern of the #FridaysforFuture movement is, therefore, that climate protection measures be adapted in the widest, fastest and most efficient way possible. In order to achieve the objective of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a limit established at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change that was held in Paris in 2015 (COP 21) and adopted by the UN. These positions do not seem to question the system itself; they are simply a call to reason and for fulfilment of objectives that have already been established.
The power of persuasion of the movement doesn't come from theoretical positions (as in 1968), but from simply saying "what is happening". It comes from insisting on the fact that, as the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say, the climate crisis has worsened in last 20 years and, despite this, politics is doing very little to change its course. German climate movement activist Luisa Neubauer comments that "the battlefield is between those who benefit most from the status quo and those who are set to lose the most." And she adds: "We young people ask ourselves why things are the way they are when they could so simply be different? And we have to fight this as strongly as we can because we have absolutely nothing to lose, except our future".
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat.
In the movement, which is symbolized by Greta, there is potential for generational conflict: voters of the future are mobilizing against the interests of those of the present. But they are not alone and many adults are willing to change their behaviour and seek a change in policy, demonstrated by the large participation of adults in the demonstrations of September 20th.
Greta has managed to create mass mobilisation through her statements, actions in the public eye and intervention in the media. Its objective is not and cannot be to solve the climate crisis, but it has won a more immediate resounding political success: a generalised and global awareness of the urgency of climate change. What she says and what she does already influences political debates in different countries and first steps, although still tentative are being taken in the right direction. Without mobilisation, this would not be happening.
The European Green Party is one of the main beneficiaries of advertising the strikes and protests of the climate movement. In Germany, the Greens obtained 20.5% of the votes in the 2019 European elections with 33% of the votes of those under 30. The electoral behaviour of young people is not just an expression of their sympathy for the environmental cause; it is also a reflection of the deep crisis that German social democracy is going through. Many people see the same worries in both the #FridaysforFuture movement and the Greens, highlighting how far the party is from the radicalism expressed by its founders.
The fact that in the party congress of the Greens, their politicians applaud the critical position of the younger generation (which strongly rejects the decisions of the adult generation) could be seen as flattery and hopefully, will not subvert representative democracy.
Greta Thunberg and the new climate movement has created a new political actor. They will need a lot of patience to continue the campaign. The fascination with the novelty and personal magnetism will diminish and interest will weaken, as will the wave of sympathy. Traditional media and social media do not stick to the same story for long. Greta Thunberg will return to school. Her generation has a lifetime ahead, though this movement should become an example of democratic commitment. Hopefully most young people will say no to fatalism and resignation. There will come a point when we become aware that environmental issues cannot be resolved if we separate them from economic and social issues. They are inextricably linked and part of the same problem.
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat. The Swedish teenager announced in December 2019 she will travel from the United States to Chile for COP 25. We still don't know how she will make the trip without producing polluting emissions. The trip is further than her trip from Europe to New York and there are no train lines that connect to two areas. This, for now, remains unclear. Regardless, it is assumed that this new challenge will bring Greta closer to the enormous social problems of Latin America. The trip to Chile will open her eyes to a different reality, very different from the ones she knows, a reality that hopefully helps her to see more clearly the extent to which environmental and economic issues are two sides of the same coin. In New York, at the headquarters of the United Nations, she has already taken steps in this direction when she exclaimed with a trembling voice to the heads of states of the world:
"How dare you! [...] We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
Svenja Blanke
Svenja Blanke is the editor of the social science journal Nueva Sociedad based in Buenos Aires.
Some are fascinated with her: they see her as a hero, as a Joan of Arc of modern times or as a Mafalda, with a political agenda to preserve planet Earth and as such, represents the younger generations as more intelligent than that of their parents. Others are angry: they see her as a naive puppet of opaque adult interests and they make fun of her.
Young ecologist, Greta Thunberg became a new global figure and depending on the political point of view of observers, she is either defended or hated. On September 20, 2019 the #FridaysforFuture movement, inspired and encouraged by the Swedish teenager, celebrated its largest mass mobilisation. In almost every country in the world, young people and adults took to the streets. It is estimated that about 4 million people mobilised around the world.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old student, has been known in Europe for around a year, but in the United States she has risen to fame over the past month. Many Americans first saw her when she appeared on the Trevor Noah Daily Show. There, she explained with her well know seriousness that the world has very little time left, precisely eight and a half years, because as of January 1, 2018, only 420 gigatons of carbon dioxide remained. Now there are only 360 gigatons left, and in eight and a half years this will run out if the current levels of emissions are maintained.
Despite her youth, Great Thunberg has become popular because of her knowledge of climate and environmental problems, for the firmness of her convictions and for the actions that she carries out. Commentators are sure that that is why she has become an icon.
The climate activist does not relate well to the irony of American television programs. When asked for her impression of New York when she arrived on the Malizia yacht, she replied that it smelled bad. Her lack of understanding of irony and her seriousness are probably related to her Asperger's syndrome (a condition she speaks openly about) and dose of Nordic frankness. All of these qualities have influenced the new environmental movement. It is a group that speaks very seriously and uses scientific research to support their arguments. It is, in fact, the antithesis of the ironic language used by generation X or millennials.
Greta Thunberg is the global face of this movement and her presence is extremely influential. In August 2019, when embarking on a trip from Europe to New York on a ship that doesn't produce carbon dioxide, she caused rage in the media and in the political world. Furthermore, her interventions at the World Climate Conference in Katowice (Poland) in December 2018 and at the World Economic Forum in Davos put the world's powerful in a very awkward position. This young girl, with her hair in braids threw slogans at them ("act" or "panic") and was able to attract the world's attention. Especially the European media. But her presence at the New York and Washington demonstrations, the meeting with Barack Obama, the appearance on the Daily Show and the speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23rd also made her a popular figure in the US.
The mass movement led by Great Thunberg dates back to the "school strike" that began on 20th August 2018. That day, instead of attending school, she sat in front of the Swedish Parliament in an attempt to draw attention to the dangers climate change represents for future generations. Her intervention produced an avalanche effect. In a few months a mass movement known as #FridaysforFuture emerged, reaching its first peak in March 2019 when 1.5 million teenagers and youngsters took to the streets to protest and demand a change in attitude to climate change. The movement is global, but its centre is in the Global North. And although in many countries the movement is led by teenage women, in no other country in the world is the symbiosis between the movement and a person is as clear as in the case of Greta Thunberg.
The activist triggered not only a political movement, but also fury from powerful media outlets. The media and commentators have become obsessed with her. According to some observers, the adoration towards Greta Thunberg is similar to a religious awakening. But this is not her problem. It is, on the contrary, a problem of the people and the media that react to her actions and her words. Within the political spectrum, environmentalism is found mostly on the left and in the academic world. The right and many liberals deny Greta Thunberg and her colleagues the right to formulate their own political ideas and goals, instead treating them as immature and spoilt. The Argentine journalist Sandra Russo calls this the first case of "global bullying", an idea which she discussed long before September 23rd when Donald Trump, the president of the United States, sent out a tweet which made fun of the 16 year old.
The criticism that Greta Thunberg's ideas about the climate would be potentially "undemocratic" since they do not allow for political compromise are based on the idea that politics works "only step by step, always through compromise". However, this can be seen as a form of soft paternalism. Greta Thunberg's sharp accusations do not take place in a vacuum, they are stark, political interventions aimed at polarizing public opinion. Her statement that "the poverty of the many pays for the luxury of the few", is according to some commentators on the extreme right, is "the product of socialisation in the Swedish education system" and is a stupid left wing criticism of capitalism.
Other critics argue that fanatical ecologists (or green capitalists) are hiding behind the young Swedish girl. More specifically, We Don't Have Time AB, a Swedish company that works on environmental projects founded in 2017, by public relations specialist Ingmar Rentzhog, who gave wide coverage to the school strikes led by Great Thunberg in 2018. On November 27 of that year, We Don't Have Time AB announced they were issuing securities on the stock exchange and mentioned her name 11 times in their advertising brochure. Earlier this year, she alongside her family said that they are no longer are in contact with the firm. Others point to the ever-present George Soros, the ghost of the global alternative right.
Everything seems to suggest that the more popular and disruptive the climate movement become, the more virulent the rejection from those who consider climate change as a conspiracy and the protection of the climate as pure nonsense becomes. The severity of reactions to a 16 year old teenager should make us reflect. Some psychologists try to explain it by saying the 'old' white men won't change their attitudes towards the environment, so instead attack Greta for her illness, for her age or because of the apparent manipulation of her activism. But behind these criticisms there is much more than the intransigence of a whole male generation. The attacks may be a sign that she, alongside the youth involved in the movement, have managed to hit a sensitive nerve. Is Greta Thunberg questioning the system?
At the climate conference held in Katowice in December 2018, the young Swedish woman stressed that political elites had not yet understood the severity of the climate crisis. Since the political class acts irresponsibly, it is up to the younger generations to take charge of their future and do what adult politics should have done a long time ago. Young people must understand what previous generations have done with climate change and respond to the chaos that have inherited. They need to ensure that their voices are heard.
In all of her speeches, Greta Thunberg makes it clear that if real and concrete measures are not taken to face the current situation, politicians will be acting irresponsibly. She maintains that rich nations have a greater obligation to reduce emissions quicker and that countries like Sweden should reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 15% annually and reduce their emissions to zero within six to twelve years. This would allow emerging economies such as India and Nigeria sufficient time to adapt their infrastructure.
The main concern of the #FridaysforFuture movement is, therefore, that climate protection measures be adapted in the widest, fastest and most efficient way possible. In order to achieve the objective of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a limit established at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change that was held in Paris in 2015 (COP 21) and adopted by the UN. These positions do not seem to question the system itself; they are simply a call to reason and for fulfilment of objectives that have already been established.
The power of persuasion of the movement doesn't come from theoretical positions (as in 1968), but from simply saying "what is happening". It comes from insisting on the fact that, as the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say, the climate crisis has worsened in last 20 years and, despite this, politics is doing very little to change its course. German climate movement activist Luisa Neubauer comments that "the battlefield is between those who benefit most from the status quo and those who are set to lose the most." And she adds: "We young people ask ourselves why things are the way they are when they could so simply be different? And we have to fight this as strongly as we can because we have absolutely nothing to lose, except our future".
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat.
In the movement, which is symbolized by Greta, there is potential for generational conflict: voters of the future are mobilizing against the interests of those of the present. But they are not alone and many adults are willing to change their behaviour and seek a change in policy, demonstrated by the large participation of adults in the demonstrations of September 20th.
Greta has managed to create mass mobilisation through her statements, actions in the public eye and intervention in the media. Its objective is not and cannot be to solve the climate crisis, but it has won a more immediate resounding political success: a generalised and global awareness of the urgency of climate change. What she says and what she does already influences political debates in different countries and first steps, although still tentative are being taken in the right direction. Without mobilisation, this would not be happening.
The European Green Party is one of the main beneficiaries of advertising the strikes and protests of the climate movement. In Germany, the Greens obtained 20.5% of the votes in the 2019 European elections with 33% of the votes of those under 30. The electoral behaviour of young people is not just an expression of their sympathy for the environmental cause; it is also a reflection of the deep crisis that German social democracy is going through. Many people see the same worries in both the #FridaysforFuture movement and the Greens, highlighting how far the party is from the radicalism expressed by its founders.
The fact that in the party congress of the Greens, their politicians applaud the critical position of the younger generation (which strongly rejects the decisions of the adult generation) could be seen as flattery and hopefully, will not subvert representative democracy.
Greta Thunberg and the new climate movement has created a new political actor. They will need a lot of patience to continue the campaign. The fascination with the novelty and personal magnetism will diminish and interest will weaken, as will the wave of sympathy. Traditional media and social media do not stick to the same story for long. Greta Thunberg will return to school. Her generation has a lifetime ahead, though this movement should become an example of democratic commitment. Hopefully most young people will say no to fatalism and resignation. There will come a point when we become aware that environmental issues cannot be resolved if we separate them from economic and social issues. They are inextricably linked and part of the same problem.
Greta has also begun to be recognised in Latin America. The urgency of social and economic crises in many countries in the region forces the environmental issues to take a back seat. The Swedish teenager announced in December 2019 she will travel from the United States to Chile for COP 25. We still don't know how she will make the trip without producing polluting emissions. The trip is further than her trip from Europe to New York and there are no train lines that connect to two areas. This, for now, remains unclear. Regardless, it is assumed that this new challenge will bring Greta closer to the enormous social problems of Latin America. The trip to Chile will open her eyes to a different reality, very different from the ones she knows, a reality that hopefully helps her to see more clearly the extent to which environmental and economic issues are two sides of the same coin. In New York, at the headquarters of the United Nations, she has already taken steps in this direction when she exclaimed with a trembling voice to the heads of states of the world:
"How dare you! [...] We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
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Senate GOP Fuels Privatization Fears by Confirming 'Quack Grifter' Dr. Oz
The new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator joins "a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health," said one critic.
Apr 03, 2025
Echoing a party-line vote by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week, the chamber's Republicans on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former televison host Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Since Trump nominated Oz—who previously ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania—a wide range of critics have argued that the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon "is profoundly unqualified to lead any part of our healthcare system, let alone an agency as important as CMS," in the words of Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
After Thursday's 53-45 vote to confirm Oz, Weissman declared that "Republicans in the Senate continued to just be a rubber stamp for a dangerous agenda that threatens to turn back the clock on healthcare in America."
Weissman warned that "in addition to having significant conflicts of interest, Oz is now poised to help enact the Trump administration's dangerous agenda, which seeks to strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act from hundreds of millions of Americans and to use that money to give tax breaks to billionaires."
"As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz will also seek to further privatize Medicare, increasing the risk that seniors will receive inferior care and further threatening the long-term health of the Medicare program. We already know that privatized Medicare costs taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs," he continued, referring to Medicare Advantage plans.
CMS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, like Oz, came under fire for his record of dubious claims during the confirmation process. Weissman said that "Dr. Oz is joining a team of snake oil salesmen and anti-science flunkies that have already shown disdain for the American people and their health. This is yet another dark day for healthcare in America under Trump."
In the middle of Trump's tariff disaster, the Senate is voting to confirm quack grifter Dr. Oz to lead the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.
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— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Oz's confirmation came a day after Trump announced globally disruptive tariffs and Senate Republicans unveiled a budget plan that would give the wealthy trillions of dollars in tax cuts at the expense of federal food assistance and healthcare programs.
"While Dr. Oz would rather play coy, this is no hypothetical. Harmful cuts to Medicaid or Medicare are unavoidable in the Trump-Republican budget plan that prioritizes another giant tax break for the president's billionaire and corporate donors," Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said ahead of the vote.
"None of Dr. Oz's 'miracle' cures that he's peddled over the years will help seniors when their fundamental health security is ripped away to make the rich richer," Carrk continued. "And while privatizing Medicare may enrich Dr. Oz's family and big insurance friends, it will cost taxpayers far more and leave millions of patients vulnerable to denials of care and higher out-of-pocket costs."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was similarly critical, saying after the vote that "at a time when our population is growing older and the need for access to home care, nursing homes, affordable prescription drugs, and quality medical care has never been greater, Americans deserve better than a snake oil salesman leading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
"Dr. Mehmet Oz has been shilling pseudoscience to line his own pockets. He can't be trusted to defend Medicare and Medicaid from billionaires who want to dismantle and privatize the foundation of affordable healthcare in this country," the union leader added. "AFSCME members—including nurses, home care and childcare providers, social workers and more—will be watching and fighting back against any effort to weaken Medicare and Medicaid. The 147 million seniors, children, Americans with disabilities, and low-income workers who rely on these programs for affordable access to healthcare deserve nothing less."
Israel Bombs More Gaza Schools, Killing Dozens, Including Many Women and Children
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
Apr 03, 2025
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—told Al Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not cbe rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
Teasing Another Senate Run, Independent Dan Osborn Says 'We Could Replace a Billionaire With a Mechanic'
"Working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it," wrote one longtime progressive strategist.
Apr 03, 2025
Dan Osborn, an Independent U.S. Senate candidate who struck a chord with working-class voters in Nebraska and came within striking distance of unseating his Republican opponent last year, announced Thursday that he's considering another run, this time challenging GOP Sen. Pete GOP Ricketts, who is up for election in 2026.
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic," Osborn wrote in a thread on X on Thursday. "I'll run against Pete Ricketts—if the support is there." Osborn said that he's launching an exploratory committee and would run as Independent, as he did in 2024.
Ricketts has served as a senator since 2023, and prior to that was the governor of Nebraska from 2015-2023. By one estimate, Ricketts has a net worth of over $165 million—though the wealth of his father, brokerage founder Joe Ricketts, and family is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
A mechanic and unionist who helped lead a strike against Kellogg's cereal company, Osborn lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) by less than 7 points in November 2024 in what became an unexpectedly close race.
Although he didn't win, he overperformed the national Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other candidates running against Republicans in competitive Senate races, according to The Nation.
"Billionaires have bought up the country and are carving it up day by day," said Osborn Thursday. "The economy they've built is good for them, bad for us. Good for huge multinationals and multibillionaires. Bad for workers. Bad for small businesses, bad for family farmers. Bad for anyone who wants Social Security to survive. Bad for your PAYCHECK."
Osborn cast the potential race as between "someone who's spent his life working for a living and will never take an order from a corporation or a party boss" and "someone who's never worked a day in his life and is entirely beholden to corporations and party."
"We could take on this illness, the billionaire class, directly," he said.
Osborn, who campaigned on issues like Right to Repair and lowering taxes on overtime payments, earned praise from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who told The Nation in late November that Osborn's bid should be viewed as a "model for the future."
Osborn "took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign," Sanders said.
In reaction to the news that Osborn is exploring a second run, a former Sanders campaign manager and longtime progressive Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, wrote: "working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it."
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