- Re: The ‘Greta Effect’: Are We Really Heading for the End Times? No ,nor has Greta ever claimed this Archived Message
Posted by John Monro
on November 10, 2019, 7:30 pm, in reply to "The ‘Greta Effect’: Are We Really This Time, for Certain Certain, Heading for the End Times?"
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Hello Thomas, This is what Strategic Culture says about itself: Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Since 2005 our journal has published thousands of analytical briefs and commentaries with the unique perspective of independent contributors. SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas. This is what mediabiasfactcheck says about this site. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/strategic-culture-foundation/ Basically probably a Russian promoted and funded site (its finances are opaque) promoting conspiracy theories and with a far right wing agenda. Not quite sure how these match. But in any case, a totally unreliable resource. For another take: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Strategic_Culture_Foundation The writer of the article, Cynthia Chung, cofounded the “Rising Tide Foundation” of Montreal, which I think is not the same as another organisation of the same name which has its origins in the USA. https://risingtidefoundation.net/about-us/ I wrote a very long critique of J M Greer’s similarly slanted article a few weeks back, so I don’t wish to have to spend too much time here. If that thread can be found, much of what I say about J M Greer’s thinking applies here. Basically his and Cynthia Chung’s arguments are based on misinterpretations of what science is saying about global warming, false analogies with past human history and fabricated claims of hysterical doomsdayism. But to cover a few. "The world has just ended. No humans are left on the planet once known as ‘Earth’ ”. writes Cynthia, supposedly quoting Great Thunberg. `Funnily enough, the only other place I can find this quote attributed to Thunberg is on another site from a chap called Robert https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Strategic_Culture_Foundation, which can be found here: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2019/eirv46n14-20190412/15-20_4614.pdf Indeed his article is so similar to Cynthia’s whoever wrote theirs first could fairly claim plagiarism by the other. He ends: Why do we tolerate this? Putting the weight of the world on the shoulders of young children—not to speak of terrifying them with doomsday scenarios—is simply child abuse. It is menticide. Youth should be a time of creative play, when the development of the cognitive faculties is paramount. Would not the world be a better place if we had more children like Jackson Oswalt, the twelve-year-old who built a nuclear fusion reactor in the family room of his parents’ home in Memphis? Shouldn’t children be given the opportunity to develop their creative talents, and aspire to become participants in the colonization of Mars and other great tasks? Don’t they deserve a truly human identity? There is no information as to who Robert Ingraham is and a Googling doesn’t find anyone that I can identify as the same man. However, it’s worth reading one of his other opinion pieces for a flavour of his political views on the same site, https://larouchepub.com/other/2019/4601-order_of_battle_for_2019_let_u.html which is basically formed on the conspiracy of the UK and its Royal Family to subjugate the US and its elite to Britain’s destructive empire. https://larouchepub.com/other/2019/4601-order_of_battle_for_2019_let_u.html This is a mere regurgitation of Lyndon LaRouche’s own thoughts about Britain’s evil empire. You can read about this here https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche But this is just an interesting diversion. Basically what I’m trying to prove that there’s absolutely no evidence that Great Thunberg said anything like what it’s claimed she has said. I’d be really surprised if she had, because everything that she’s stressed about global warming is based on a sound reading of the science, which has never claimed the death of humanity by 2030. This is the “shrill, panicking, hysterical” slur of global warming deniers and sceptics as a way of attacking their opponents. Accuse them of something they’re not actually guilty of or that there is no basis for considering global warming is a crisis, when it jolly well is. . Straw man arguments to perfection. Anyway Cynthia goes on in the same dismissive way as Ingraham, and I’m afraid that JMG was also guilty of. She even kindly provides three technological solutions to the “non crisis”. Nuclear power and nuclear fusion (which she states will be “soon” - really?) and blasting landfills with a “plasma torch”. Really??? Thus revealing a level of scientific illiteracy that should have precluded her writing her article about global warming in the first place. In looking at what’s going on now, basically what I see is that the wool is finally falling from the eyes of many citizens around the world, particularly the younger citizens, who rightly would consider they’ve the most to lose with global warming. Younger citizens in the wealthier countries have in any case major grievances about their situation in the neoliberal capitalist economy, - student debt, low paid jobs, housing unaffordability - so this existential crisis is hitting a pretty raw nerve with many - hence the “Hey, Boomer”. Panic is not a solution to anything. but I don’t see people actually panicking, but just a deep and vital concern which needs urgent action, and effective activism. It's people suddenly realising the dimension of what is happening to us as a species, and to planet we live on. There's a sense of impending loss that's as emotionally charged as losing a parent or loved one, almost a cosmic despair. I think they're right to feel like this. Imagine you're the person standing in few short years' time on the northern shores of the Canadian Archipelago, in your T-shirt and shorts, perhaps holding hands with your partner, and viewing nothing but the lapping of the waves to the furthest horizon. What would you be thinking? How could you cope with the realisation and understanding of what is happening? How would you communicate this with your loved one? The observer standing on the outskirts of Dresden at the end of the war would have less reason for distress. Dismissing this rational existential concern is no better than being a climate warming denier, because what’s the use of claiming that you accept the science of global warming, if you’re not then prepared to accept the science and the urgent responsibility of dealing with it? |