We’re all experts now. And Greta Thunberg’s accusations are tailor-made for lighting-up the fluffy brains of all those earnest believers in votes at sixteen. Greta is a girl with plenty to say, but nothing to offer, to the serious study of climate change.
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I have been observing the Greta Thunberg phenomenon with a mixture of bafflement and unease. I’m sure a lot of people are going to disagree with me about this, but after a week of doing so, it is hard to shake myself out of the strong conviction that the way she is being feted and exploited encapsulates just how profoundly depraved and utterly unwise our culture has become.
Miss Thunberg (I’m sorry, but she is far too young to be called a Ms) hails from Sweden, a country I used to know quite well. I formed the view at the time – I’ve seen little to change my mind since – that it is populated primarily by elks and space cadets. Their denialism in relation to Islamic immigration provides a classic case in point: decades of unremitting politically correct socialism have left them incapable of discerning the difference between firm love and craven appeasement. Fair enough, the elks don’t know any better, but many Swedes can be very hard to encounter without getting that creepy feeling after a few minutes that they’re all cloned in Stepford.
So culturally, our Greta started out with a handicap common to many a Left-of-Centre Volvo driver: an unshakeable belief that they’re right and we’re wrong.
This young lady is just sixteen years old. When she began her campaign to Save The World, she had just turned fifteen.
I wonder how many of you remember some of the things William Hague said when he was a teenager?
Those of my generation remember Tory Boy at the 1977 Conservative Party conference, when (at the same tender age) he gave a speech that had the tabloid media tumescent at the thought of lots of Thatcher’s children preparing for power. He too carried a message filled with dire warnings:
“As a 16-year-old, I represent what may well seem to be the last generation for the Conservative Party….What sort of world do young people want? Like the rest of the British people, they share the aspirations and hopes of the Conservative Party, but in this case it is not translated into Conservative votes….If we should fail now to reverse the progress of socialism, we can write off the future of this party and of the country. But if we rise to the challenge and if we determine to roll back the frontiers of the state, we will not only capture the imagination and support of the younger people; we will save free enterprise and Great Britain, and create a capital-owning, home-owning democracy for the young people.”
It was stirring stuff. But the following should be borne in mind:
- At the time and for many years afterwards, Hague was a passionate rejector of EU membership. Today, it’s hard to tell him from a dyed-in-the-wool Remainer
- The share and home owning democracy turned into a disaster for many ordinary citizens
- He was completely wrong about the future of Conservatism
- The Thatcherism he so admired not only bred a culture of near-universal material greed, it also destroyed the social fabric of the working class….and replaced it with the Underclass we see today.
This is the point I am making: at the age of sixteen, William Hague lacked the breadth of vision and life experience to offer a considered opinion about the future of Britain.
Now please bear with me as I present further support for my case. Hague doesn’t suffer from Asperger’s syndrome….and he was talking about the future socio-political development of one small country on the planet Earth.
By the family’s own admission, Greta Thunberg does have Asperger’s. And she is talking about a subject infinitely more complex: the behaviour of one ecosphere in a multiply three-dimensional dataset involving population, drinking water, trees, CO² emissions, the rate of CO² exit from Earth’s atmosphere, the role of CO² in the climatic balance, Britain’s role in trying to reduce emissions, Chinese CO² output, saline water behaviour, ill understood food chains, minute periods of data collection, the correct assessment of the nature of our sun and a host of other considerations far too numerous to include in one online post.
Examine the nature of Asperger’s if you will. This is what contemporary medical opinion has to say about it:
‘It is a developmental disorder characterised by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests…..people with these symptoms are now included within the autism spectrum disorder along with autism and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.”
Greta Thunberg is a half-formed adult whose objectivity is flawed by an obssessive compulsion about one subject: climate change. Her insensitivity in relation to social interaction further blanks out her ability to process data that disagrees with her belief system….for to do so causes all sufferers from this syndrome to suffer from acute anxiety.
And yet here she is, being used – and no other verb will suffice – by the likes of Caroline Lucas, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn to enhance an agenda that somehow vindicates them…..and attracts votes.
It is nothing less than child exploitation. Now, let’s examine that phenomenon – and the role of parents and politicians in such a process.
Nearly thirty years ago, I wound up helping with the task of being McCauley Culkin’s minder during one weekend. I did not develop a positive opinion of his parents. To be frank, I felt certain that his projection into Hollywood stardom would have a disastrous effect on the little fellow. That did not require any kind of insightful leap on my part: it would’ve been obvious to an intelligent twelve year old that such was going to be his fate.
Today, I am forced to ask what on earth Greta Thunberg’s parents are thinking about by allowing her to be thrust into a role that is somewhere surreal between playing Shirley Temple and David Attenborough.
Please do not misunderstand me: I fully accept that the Earth’s climate is changing, and I share the view of those who are concerned about this. It’s all very well for James Delingpole to sermonise endlessly about fake data and megalomanic “warmists”: but James offers nothing in the way of an insurance policy in the event that he just might be hopelesly wrong.
Nevertheless, I am sickened by the sight of Corbyn, Lucas and co using this kid as a means of advancing their agenda of votes for sixteen year olds. And I find myself suspicious of the motives of her parents. Quite obviously, there is serious money to be earned from the superficial and lachrymose emotionalism of Greta Thunberg’s regrettably simplistic view of Planet Earth’s future.
Greta is a rather sad echo of tabloid drama about our ecosphere. As she matures – and is hopefully given more help with her condition – she will finally grasp that her pubertal opinion on the survival of life on Earth was uninformed when she rose to ephemeral fame.
I wonder how many of those lionising her now will be there to help her through that future crisis.
The Slog 