Greta Thunberg speaking at the UN
Note: Greta's speech is reprinted below. Her quotes are in italics, mine follow each quote. If it turns out there were errors in transcription — as seems likely — I'll try to update with corrections. I apologize for the snarky tone, but if a 17-year-old can dish it out, I think she can take it.
"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."So in your first paragraph you confess that what you're doing is wrong, and you shouldn't be doing it. You note you should be back home and in school. OK, so far we're 100% in agreement. Next?
"Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you?"Not sure where you're getting your information. No sentient adult goes to young people "for hope," whether they've been "dared" to or otherwise. Normally, when adults consider young people like yourself, the operative word is "despair." And if you're unfamiliar with that word, it means "absence of hope."
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words..."Wow, you must have had very fragile dreams, and an even more precarious childhood, if mere empty words could steal them. Even words loaded with meaning shouldn't be able to take down someone's dreams that easily, if the dreams are even a little bit deeply held. But empty words? Greta, you need to find better dreams and cling to them with more determination. As for your stolen childhood, this makes me suspect you didn't exactly win the lottery when it comes to parents, did you? Just sayin'.
"...and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing."OK, sounds like someone's been playing too much of the computer video game Civilization. Yes, in Sid Meier's Civilization VI people are suffering, people are dying, and entire ecosystems are collapsing. Meanwhile back in reality, none of that is occurring. Well, none of it that is caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide at least. Greta, try to spend a few hours each day actually off your computer, so you can experience the world as it really is, not as your scary online world, and your handlers, are convincing you it must be.
"We are in the beginning of a mass extinction..."Now it seems you've fallen into a time machine which has transported you back to the Yucatan Peninsula, sixty-five million years ago, when the comet was about to annihilate the dinosaurs. Either that or someone is doing a very good job of filling your head with utter nonsense. Shame on them, for scaring the socks off you. There is no evidence that we're at the beginning of a mass extinction - certainly not of any life forms we care about.
"...and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?"Um, did your speechwriter not know the audience you'd be addressing today? You're speaking to diplomats in the United Nations General Assembly. There is probably no group of people on Earth less interested in economic growth than these folks. They don't really care about money, either, as they're all on generous expense accounts and — thanks to diplomatic immunity — can park anywhere they want in Manhattan without worrying about being ticketed or towed. First rule of public speaking: Know your audience.
"For more than 30 years the science has been crystal-clear."Did you bother to look at any of that science? Thirty years ago they were saying Manhattan would be under water by now. Most every prediction so called "climate scientists" have made during the past thirty years has failed to come true. This is not science being crystal-clear. It is shamanism being crystal-clear. You need to learn the difference. A science that is not able to make what are called "useful, non-obvious predictions" is not science. It's religion. And, I'm sorry, but you've become ensnared in the climate cult's terrible clutches.
"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."Another rule of effective speaking: don't contradict yourself, especially within a single sentence. If the "politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight," what exactly are you expecting these UN diplomats to do, beyond what they're already doing? If the solutions are truly nowhere in sight, you're certainly not going to get them from this crowd.
"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."Greta, on this one, best go with "evil." Again, you're addressing the core members of the United Nations, arguably the most worthless organization on the planet today. Even if they did believe something was an urgent problem, they'd not have the collective will to do anything about it. Actually, a better description than evil in this case would be "utterly f.....g worthless." Remember, these are the very folks who commissioned the IPCC itself, and told it to make reports...every six years. You'd think if the world was about to end, reports of it happening could be slightly more frequent.
"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. 50% may be acceptable to you but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice, 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."Are you aware that you're quoting alarmist predictions from the very scientists who've yet to be right about any of their predictions? Does that not concern you?
"How dare you pretend that this can be sold with just business as usual and some technical solutions with today's emissions levels that remaining CO2 budgets will be entirely gone within less than 8 and a half years."Well, ignoring that the sentence itself is gibberish, what exactly are you wanting anyone to do? You just told us that there are no solutions anywhere in sight. You're very good at saying what you're angry about. But we haven't yet heard the grand plan that will solve everything. If you don't have it, do you really think these diplomats sitting in front of you do?
"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."Your rhetoric is slipping into the category of deranged, verbal nonsense, but I do find it interesting that you — a seventeen year old — "dares" (if we can borrow your favorite word) to tell an audience of people over twice your age, that they are insufficiently mature. Rarely does insulting your audience achieve desired results, in public speaking. Might be time to consider firing your speech writer.
"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."Well, if change is coming whether they like it or not, why are you even bothering to give this speech? And by the way, what change is coming? You've already confessed there are no solutions in sight. This would seem to suggest change is not coming, at least anytime soon. And as for the eyes of all future generations being on the UN General Assembly, good luck with that. Even the eyes of today's generation aren't on anything the UN General Assembly does — much less will be the eyes of all generations unto the end of time. But I'm sure the people you're addressing right now wish they were that important.
Anyway, Greta, a word of advice. You're clearly a very upset and angry young lady, with endless dedication to your goals. Rather than hurl hate-filled rhetoric at a room of old folks whom you rightly predict won't do what you want them to do, why don't you roll up your sleeves and try to make a difference yourself? I think we can all agree that public speaking is probably not your best contribution to the Cause. Go back to school, take some atmospheric physics, basic chemistry, and geology classes. Maybe dabble with the design of that machine that's going to suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Trust me, it's not yet on anyone's drawing board. You can be the first!
And a bonus. If you truly study this issue that has so captured your attention, pretty soon you're going to learn that the whole thing is one gigantic hoax, the greatest hoax in human history, being perpetrated by the government-educational-industrial complex. You're going to learn that pretty much everything that's been indoctrinated into your head is false. You're going to learn that real scientists, tens of thousands of them, have already learned this and have gone on record as acknowledging it. You're going to learn you're being used by adults to turn you into a propagandist for shamanistic alarmism, and you're going to realize that because of it, you've been the victim of massive child abuse.
When you learn all this, I predict that your present anger is going to look like a calm, tranquil lake compared to how you will feel then. I predict at that point you'll decide to write your own speech. And no matter who's in the audience when you give it, I predict it will be scathing.
Full transcript:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit
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