Teenage Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg seems to command an almost universal level of adoration from the press, and from politicians who fall over themselves to meet her. A thankfully rather more sceptical approach is taken by Paulina Neuding at Quillette:
When Greta Thunberg was 11 years old, she went two months without eating. At least, that is what a recent family memoir asks us to believe. Her heart rate and blood pressure showed signs of starvation, and she stopped speaking to anyone but her parents and younger sister, Beata. After years of depression, eating disorders, and anxiety attacks, she was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). She also suffers from selective mutism, a disorder related to severe anxiety which can render her unable to speak to anyone outside her closest family. When she wants to tell a climate researcher that she is planning a school strike to save the environment, she speaks through her father.
Scenes from the Heart (“Scener ur hjärtat,” 2018) recounts the events that led to Greta Thunberg’s now-famous “school strike for climate,” during which hundreds of thousands of children cut classes for a day to protest government inaction over climate change. Thunberg now strikes every Friday and spent three weeks sitting outside the Swedish Parliament at the beginning of the school year. Scenes from the Heart is written by her family—her mother, father, sister Beata, and herself—and the story is narrated by Greta’s mother, the opera soprano Malena Ernman, who was a celebrity in Europe long before her daughter’s rise to fame. Although the book is only available in Swedish for the time being, it is already being translated into numerous languages—a development that reflects the global fascination with Thunberg’s eccentric campaign. Their memoir tells the story of “a family in crisis and a planet in crisis,” and while these two narratives might appear to be entirely unrelated, Ernman and her co-authors insist they are inextricably linked. The oppression of women, minorities, and people with disabilities, we are told, is a product of the same root cause as climate change: our unsustainable way of life. The family’s private crisis and the global climate crisis, the authors implausibly argue, are simply symptoms of the same systemic disorder.
Then there's her sister....
It's all very odd. She's met the Pope, been named by Time Magazine as one of their 100 most influential people for 2019, and been compared to Jesus. There is a cult-like feel to this whole business, which - without wishing to denigrate the girl, or her message - does feel decidedly unhealthy. Jesus? More like Joan of Arc.
I do not wish to suggest that 16 year olds are necessarily too young to understand the consequences of their actions, nor that the challenges Thunberg faces make her unsuitable to take a stand on political issues, or even to lead a global movement. No one who has heard her address world leaders in impeccable English can doubt that she is intelligent and extraordinarily capable on some level. Her mother stresses that her daughter has never felt better than during her campaign to address the existential challenge posed by our changing climate, and Thunberg herself says working for the climate has helped her recover. For someone coping with the unhappiness caused by her various debilitating conditions, this is no small thing. But adults have a moral obligation to remain adults when dealing with children in the public square and not to allow themselves to get carried away by the trite sentimentality of messianic or revolutionary dreams.
When an adult says something foolish, most will happily correct them, but when a child does the same thing, they are treated differently.
This girl has been indulged, patronised and lauded because she says what her sponsors want to hear. If she had been arguing for Brexit, no one would have given her a second of airtime. As it it she claims that official figures showing the UK has cut CO2 emissions since 1990 are false - we have done nothing apparently. I wonder if a child claiming the official figures were correct would be so indulged.
Posted by: TDK | April 25, 2019 at 02:03 PM