I haven't heard enough of GT speaking to know how solid her science is, or how much you're correct that she takes a moral high ground over (what?) climate deniers?
It is not her science, since she is just parroting words. Just read or listen to that speech and the moral high ground is evident. If someone can get close to the feat of not having a moral high ground over climate change deniers, is not her, but her puppet masters.
But firstly, I think you deny her any agency to say that someone put her up to this, if that's what you're implying.
Absolutely yes.
And you may not want to hear it from a teenager, but there really is such a thing that young people, including the very young, are feeling a lot of anxiety about some of the predictions as to where climate change is leading.
So their parents should pay them a therapist. Their anxiety is completely irrelevant.
I also don't see anything wrong with young people taking on political activism-in-training.
I do, specially when they are extremely young, and specially when they are trained. Actually, I bet you do too. All I need to do is to show you a young conservative. You all are giving her (and the structure behind her) a pass because you are on the same side of the political fence. It is the a "the ends justify the means" approach. But I am quite certain that those means will backfire spectacularly and I hope that I still can laugh about it.
You've got to start somewhere having a voice in things that affect you.
This I can agree, but it should be minimally honest. And they could start by using less cell phones, that consume a lot of energy AND have batteries that huge problem to discard. But, hey, it is better to demand that some family I don't know turns off the heating.
What a cynical response. Did you listen to the rest? Do you have any idea if her numbers are right? If nothing else, her passion as a spokesperson for her generation is real.
Unfortunately, I did. Passion is real in all religious fanatics, suicide terrorists and conspiracy theorists. But I see more hysteria than passion, anyway.
Regarding "her numbers", here is the full speech, where I inserted some comments, in bold :
"My message is that we'll be watching you.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope.
[no, they come to you for votes] How dare you!
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
[no, the ones who are using you stole your childhood] And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing
[yes, for a multitude of reasons, not just for a few fashionable ones]. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction
[no comments], and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
[and what are the politics and solutions needed? Or you actually mean the ones you want?]
"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
[Any hard threshold is whishfull thinking. I agree with the obvious idea of cutting down emissions, just don't try to sell magic numbers. They are only good to lose rational discussions. Instead of repeating magic numbers, start telling what you are willing to do -- the price you are willing to pay -- in order to cut down emissions. All the rest is cheap talk]
"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution
[topics which I am completely sure she completely masters...] or the aspects of equity and climate justice
[which is the greatest stupidity I ever heard]. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.
"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences
[here begins the despicable victimhood speech].
"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.
From the Royal Society: "Nevertheless, several major issues make it impossible to give precise estimates of how global or regional temperature trends will evolve decade by decade into the future"
From an older reference, but I think it is still valid (surely Chris will check): "The mid-range model estimate of human induced global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is based on the premise that the growth rate of climate forcing agents such as carbon dioxide will accelerate."
That is, those clear cut scenarios are indeed alarmist in a sense. Such an approach gives ammunition to "deniers".
But the whole point in those models, according to those sources which actually are the ones she uses, is that those models are based on the premise that emission grows, so, yes, if you break that premise you break the model. (and I actually doubt she has a clue of a what a model is)
"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
"Thank you."
This victimhood (yes, I know this is a "conservative talking point") talk really makes me wanna puke. "Oh, this is the generation who had it worst". No, it is the complete opposite. First, every generation always had to deal with the world left behind by the previous ones. The after-wars generation inherited a completely destroyed world. The 60's and 70's generation inherited a world facing the threat of nuclear extinction. The late 90's early 2000 generation faced a world with emission levels at least in the same order of magnitude of what we have today, but with far less technology on alternative energy sources.
