Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Speaking in London, climate action crusader Greta Thunberg explained that Britain is especially guilty for wrecking the world, because Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
British MP Michael Gove praised Thunberg’s trashing of Britain’s historical contribution to global prosperity.
The Greta Thunberg effect: at last, MPs focus on climate change
Michael Gove admits to feeling guilt as young activist says: your fossil fuels policy is beyond absurd
…
“This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind,” she told the packed audience of MPs, officials and fellow school strikers. “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.”
There was no let-up for the audience. The UK, she said, was very special due to its “mind-blowing historical carbon debt”, a reference to the country’s record as the birthplace of industrialisation. But this was also, she said, because its claims of world-leading progress on cutting emissions are partly the result of “creative accounting” and are belied by the government’s plans for more high-emissions projects.
“The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels, like for example the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports, as well as the planning permission for a brand new coalmine, is beyond absurd,” she said.She finished to a standing ovation and cheers, then sat quietly as the panel of senior politicians gave their responses. Several appeared chastened.
“Your voice – still, calm and clear – is like the voice of our conscience,” said the environment secretary, Michael Gove. “When I listened to you, I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents’ generation, and I recognise that we haven’t done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg
What were our selfish ancestors thinking, when they started the process of industrial fossil fuel extraction which gave us automobiles and telephones and computers and comfortable indoor jobs which don’t involve back breaking labor and early death? When they set the stage for medicines and anaesthetics and dentistry and aged care and reliable food supplies?
How dare Britain help raise the living standards of the entire human race.
Clearly a proper apology is required. I look forward to Michael Gove delivering a proper apology for Britain’s role in helping to create the modern world in Britain’s Parliament, when his party chooses him as the next British Conservative Prime Minister.
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No normal 16 yo…in this day and age….dresses up and acts like a 8 yo
…conveniently at the exact same time her mother writes and tries to promote her book on global warming
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6946815/Whos-REALLY-16-year-old-Greta-Thunberg.html
Sure would be interesting to follow the money here… 👓💲💸👧👩👨
“historical carbon debt”….sounds like reparations don’t it?
amazing that all these people that want reparations….have no clue what shape they would be in today it things hadn’t gone that way
Offset by the benefits they received from development of an economy that provided goods, services, health care advances, communications, television, education, etc.
I doubt she understands even half of the words that are put into her mouth.
Right, I want reparations from the Italiansfor their Roman Empire, The Swedes, The Norwegians, The Danes, for their invasions of Britain!!!
Don’t forget the Normans who now are our aristocracy and the biggest blight of all.
I want reparations from the Brits, who starved us and kicked us out of Ireland. And reparations from places like Boston and New York , who treated us like unwelcome outcasts.
Without U.K. bestowing modernity and democracy along with free thinking and free will, we might all live in totalitarian squalor.
That of course is what the warmists want to return us to, and quickly.
Following the money will lead you to the big time PR professionals who run the show. https://www.thelocal.se/20190209/start-up-used-child-climate-activist-to-raise-millions
Isn’t Griff in the UK ?
So he owes us all reparations 🙂
Maybe she should be looking closer to home for people to blame.
The iron making industrial occurred throughout Europe at about the same time.
England was about to become more influential because of location and trade practices.
Then again you could point the finger at the Romans who spread iron making everywhere in the empire.
The young Lady was ill served in her history education.
https://www.jernkontoret.se/en/the-steel-industry/the-history-of-swedish-steel-industry/
michael
People see paintings of Britain’s ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ and the ironworks at Coalbrookdale and think that the whole of the UK was like that. In fact the UK was still very much an agrarian country until well into the C20th and as such was probably net negative with regards to CO₂ emissions.
With respect, you’re wrong. She wasn’t “ill served in her history education,” she apparently didn’t have a proper “history education.”
It points to this PR agency:
https://www.wedonthavetime.org/
And it’s not “a social network”, there is BIG money there:
https://borsvarlden.com/artiklar/we-dont-have-time-har-fatt-globalt-momentum/
(“Börsvärlden” is Sweden’s WSJ)
I look foreward to the Brexit and perhaps Brittain severing the Grid Tie with Europe. 2 good Nuclear Generators is all they would need to replace what they receive from the EU
Brexit will never happen and GT’s parents and media should be charged with child abuse
Brexit WILL happen. You can count on it,
I look at that child’s photo and all I can think of is ‘Children of the Damned’ (or the story “Midwich Cuckoos’, whichever you prefer).
She looks like the female version of Sheldon Cooper
… and a child will lead them, over the cliff!
As someone recently wrote here: “Never try to catch a falling walrus!” This applies to falling Gretas as well (not that she has any resemblance to a walrus).
Little Greta should learn to fully embrace the glories of a pre-industrial society, and be put to work as a farm labourer, like so many of her 18th century Swedish ancestors. Not much time for school strikes, but plenty of opportunity to worry about the weather.
’…plenty of opportunity to worry about the weather.’ Brilliant! HA!
+1
Gove as leader, I hope not.
I mhabe a concealed cyanide tablet, in case of such a possibility but
A sick 16 year old has more brains. She is the leader.
Hang on, I knew I’d seen that hair do somewhere before:
WP:
The archetypal story of adults who selfishly abandon the future of the children for their own well-being.
Like all fairy tales, I’m sure this will have a happy ending.
Gove is capable of more turns in the (political) wind than a wind turbine. And all for his own advancement, not the country’s.
Yeah, the guy is such a two-faced slimeball. Fortunately he has a face like Golum, so no one is going to be fooled.
Gove has no conscience. I’m surprised he even knows the word exists.
Perhaps he just found one – he can smell the £££ and the opportunity for self advancement and screwing everyone else in the process…
Well, a weathercock is a wind turbine of sorts, after all.
It would be out of the frying pan into the fire.
Beyond belief that an ostensibly serious politician should uncritically accept such nonsense.
Yet our Parliament is full of them.
Look at his photo. You can that a ‘serious policitian’? More like a grinning gargoyle/freak. Apologies if I just offended any gargoyles/freaks. The stupid inane grin of a career politician who stabbed Boris Johnson in the back to get where he is, has zero principles other than self advancement, and thinks he’s getting away with it.
This is so sick! Who’s writing those statements for her? Do they really beliefe you can improve life without making errors like pollutions, clear cutting etc. Important is to learn out of errors and to make it better the next time and to clean up the mess afterwards?
Can we have progress without risk? Life is dangerous and we all have to die even if we do nothing!
@Klaus “Life is dangerous and we all have to die even if we do nothing!”
But I intend to live forever -or die in the attempt!
Don’t do anything drastic,I’ll be in your shadow.
That’s my plan too. So far it’s working great!
It’s nauseating the way politicians are sucking up to this naive and idiotic child
She won’t be accepting any Nobel prize, then
Nice one!😏😏😏😏
She’s already won one Norwegian prize, for “free speech”, which is absurd, as if she had been denied voicing her concern for the climate. It’s a substantial amount of money, and she intends to spend it in support of the appeal case against the Norwegian State, the plaintiffs (the “ususal suspects”) lost the first round.
Poor Greta, she should invest the money in oil company shares instead.
PHs are quite good at delivering apologies for things that they had no control over. Think Rudd on the Stolen Generation – which did not happen. Apologies for past treatments of homosexuals, institutionalized barriers for Roman Catholics, treatment of Jews … No doubt readers can think of many more.
This only confirms that Mr Gove should never be considered as a possible PM.
It is the “Emperors New Clothes” all over again, except in reverse.
This time it is the child who needs to be told she is talking nonsense.
The trouble is, nobody dare tell her.
I’ll volunteer to tell her, I’ll just say “you have a big sloppy bag of water where your brain should be,” and “your mother is a crazy opportunistic lunatic, who is crazy, not to mention insane, and a lunatic”
I’ll I ask in return is a heart-felt “attaboy!”
Attaboy!
Don’t say that about her brain, persons with Asperger tend to take all statements very literally.
Reporter: “So Greta, tell us how much CO2 is in the atmosphere”
Greta: “A lot”
Chicken Little could only spread the message of her irrational alarmism to the other animals within earshot. Today’s Chicken Little’s have social media platforms, government bureaucracies, sycophants, captive School children, and countless NGO’s and Foundations pouring HUGE $$$ into their alarmist messaging.
Chicken Little was soon corrected by the rational-thinking animals in her community. She was shown the error of her cataclysmic conclusion. This is much harder to do because of the massive support given to today’s Chicken Little’s. The fable might just have a horrific conclusion in this environment.
Oh, I will tell her.
Very directly, plainly, and right to her face, I will explain how she has absolutely no idea of what she is talking about, is beyond deluded and misinformed, and she should do herself and everyone else a favor by dropping her psychotic fascination with doomsday prophets and their end of the world fantasies.
I will also tell her what sort of things a normal 16 year old ought to be concerning themselves with.
Green angel Greta arrived by sailing vessel?
Everytime I think: “more absurd it cannot get” .
And then this article.
The Dutch parliament is eager to welcome Greta.
The world has become a psychiatric yard were patients have taken control.
This “crusade” has not only jumped the shark, it’s now performed several backflips and triple axles. Game over after next year’s 50th Earth Day and Trump wins 2020.
Then they’ll acknowledge the Great Cooling–and take full credit on their way to fomenting equally contagious hysteria over 6th Great Extinction, or plastic bags, or something . . .
Apologies – should be “PMs” not “PHs”.
BP says that UK’s contribution to global CO2 emissions is one point one per cent. So we can ruin our economy and devastate the lives of the poor and make no difference whatever.
Why the 1972.IceAge Scare?
Yes, but if we hadn’t developed modern technology the Chinese would still be all poor starving subsistence farmers with no carbon footprint. It’s still all our fault.
Conclusion: it’s Britain’s fault they didn’t think of the prosperity they’d wreak on the world hundreds of years ago. Shame on you!
(sarcasm = obvious)
Hey thats the same as Australia’s. Lets all pass the buck equally. Anyway I’d say there are quite a few Indian and Chinese peasants who have a lot to answer for.
I wonder what Greta’s life today would be like had the industrial revolution never happened. My guess is that it would make the life depicted in “The Handmaids Tale” look downright wonderful.
She’d probably go on TV – oops, not invented – and then jump on a train – oops, not invented – and call her mum on her phone – oops……..
She would ride all ove the world on an amphibious, non-methane emitting horse.
If not for the industrial revolution and/or fossil fuels, the huge advances in medical care, human longevity, the Green Revolution, and all the other advances that would never had occurred but for access to cheap and abundant energy, it is very unlikely that any particular person alive today would have lived to be their current age, or more probably never even have been born.
Why would anyone think otherwise?
Obviously the capacity to grow enough food to feed the world would not exist, and this one factor alone means that most of us would not even exist.
Let young Greta listen to Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter”, while she reads the words to the lyrics.
Let her understand that everything today is a product of the past and that past includes the Swedish and other Viking ancestors of modern Britain.
If everyone is to be blamed, then no one is blameless. Let her see this as the end of blame.
Then she could go on to ponder the lyrics of “The Immigrant Song” while stamping her feet to the rhythm. That might be enlightening as well as cathartic.
Hanged as a witch or dumped in an asylum for the insane would be my guess. I’m sure the resultant smaller personal carbon footprint would have pleased her.
But for the industrial revolution, people like this would not be here. There would be few schools, few universities, few hospitals, and most people would still be ignorant, working the land, eating poorly and dying early. Poor Gretha. She is a privileged brat with neither wisdom, common sense, nor knowledge of what enables her to bite the hands that feed her. Ignore these luddites. They know nothing.
Of course she knows nothing, she’s 16. What did you know at 16 ?
The question is, why is the press pumping her up and why are world leaders queuing up for photo ops? Who is REALLY behind this.?
Greg
If this doesn’t work they will get someone younger perhaps a 10 year old. If that doesn’t work then on down the ages until they get to a 1 year old and we will know what they might say because someone can feel it. But of course it will be exactly the same message about how it’s all the UK’s fault for not only the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge but planting new ones and finding out how to grow better ones.
Next up; an unborn baby. What could be more innocent than an unborn baby? Greta may already have been severely contaminated by industrial society. Just imagine how much co2 she has already breathed out in her young life! Can she really be the saviour of our climate? How can we know that she did not indulge in climate-killing food habits and plastic toys at the age of five? Maybe she even liked cows! At sixteen she may well already be too old. Let us hear the truly innocent speak, straight from the womb!
the people behind this want to shift the Overton window massively in favour of a bureaucratic world government.
Greg
It’s all about Optics, gad what a marketing buzzword. Here is a Trillion $$ business opportunity just waiting for those types, you know the ones I mean, to take advantage.
Now that they know this shtick works, there will be many more Greta Thunbergs trotted out on stage, each with their own poignant story line. This is being scripted by the best for the worst.
As for “who” they are – as George Carlin said – It’s a big club and you ain’t in it
I see what’s going wrong now. It should be the children who should be teaching in the schools, not the teachers. /sarc
You really need to pay attention to modern educational theory before putting things down in text.
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/how-put-self-directed-learning-work-your-classroom
It’s a strange new world out there in Western education
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Greta is surely in the Nobel Peace Award queue at the top. This all will spoil her life. Not the 450 ppm in 2040.
It is simply not politically correct to show any resistance to the silly points she raises. Also, arent we white guys “toxic”. Did we ask the world of diversity if it was okay to create the Age of Enlightenment/Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, Space Age, Technological Revolution …No we didn’t! I tried to weasel out of it with the disclaimer that I didn’t create any of these things. I didn’t even invent the wheel. I just took full advantage of it like everybody else. I’m the victim here! They told me I was male, straight and definitely the wrong color.
Reminds me of the Children’s Crusade. And that didn’t end well.
I used to like Gove.
… and your hero in Lord of the Rings was Golum?
What about the fish? And Gove’s promises to restore British fishing rights? That was until he must have words with Treezer and she persuaded him to lay off….
Thankfully, Greta travelled to the UK to chastise us by train. Where was the train invented????
What powered that train?
Of course the UK will be rolling out 100 hydrogen powered trains in 2020 to replace diesel… and many of the others are electric, driven by electricity which is 33% renewable (and nuclear comes in on top)
ROFL.
Which day was it 33% Griff, certainly not last Saturday and Sunday when it peaked at about 30% for 2 hours when the Sun was at it’s maximum and below 20% for the rest of the day and below 10% once the sun set. It is a good job that Demand was down below 30GW.
Grift speaks as if this is a good thing.
Presume she did the wet bit by (diesel or gas) boat?
There is a Channel Tunnel you know!
But not from Norway…
or, rather, Sweden.
In the item by Nick Robinson, on BBC TV it was stated that she had travelled everywhere by rail.
I had imagined that if that were true, she had travelled to France by rail and then used the channel tunnel to get to the uk.
If it turns out she travelled part of the way by air, it could be embarrassing for her and Nick Robinson,
This article in “The Metro”, states that she travelled all the way by train.
The Channel Tunnel is the only option for the last bit of the journey.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/20/greta-thunberg-two-day-train-journey-join-extinction-rebellion-london-9276389/
In the deep Swedish forests, by pixies. And made out of recycled plastic…eh, wood. Then evil Brits introduced that nasty metal.
She’s banging in those air miles.
Some people, typically following an age gradient, are, ironically, more than a little green.
Our fossil fuels policy is truly beyond absurd when our politicians take instruction from a schoolgirl.
I just heard Chris Packham (nature and popular culture TV presenter) on the radio, echoing this child. Criticising over-50’s for damaging the planet by their use of fossil fuels. The same Chris Packham who routinely jets around the globe, for the very serious task of filming TV programmes.
And who, at the last count, had two pet dogs (poodles) and we all know that they contribute to climate change.
The BBC effectively bans the likes of intelligent, erudite and informed citizen scientists like Nigel Lawson and his ilk yet fawns over a 16 year-old who can seemingly be diagnosed as having a few press-releases short of a book-plug.
And MPs make fools of themselves believing everything she says – mainly because it gives their ideas for ‘CC-related’ taxation a justification.
Of course Gove & fellow travellers are supporting this, which has been carefully planned for some time.
It is the Globalists latest attempt to reboot the climate scam, which has become a non-issue for all but the young and foolish , and those who intend to benefit with money and power.
Greta,
I hope you realize that your traveling to the UK has place an enormous carbon burdon on your 3 times great grandchildren to pay for your selfishness. They will undoubtedly face Meters of Seal Level Rise during their lifetime due to your selfishness in the Carbon Footprint you have traveling to the UK
The UN IPCC claim of just 12 years remaining until the prophesied catastrophic climate change is probably true because in 12 years time everyone will know it was all BS. Polar bears will still be ripping apart seals to feast on them, sea levels will not have risen nor will there be 1 billion climate refugees plus ski resorts will still be booming. Since 1970 every disaster prediction that has ever been made by these charlatans has not come close to fruition. Yet now they focus on the most vulnerable and susceptible, the children, indoctrinating them and filling their minds with fearful doubts of any possible future they may have and this they have the audacity to call science.
Britain has also helped to create the healthiest world, the longest lived world, the wealthiest world the happiest world, given it the rule of law, democracy, fantastic culture from art, literature to music.
I think we can be proud of the industrial revolution we fostered as it has made the world a far better place. Who wants to go back to diseases that kill you at 30 , serfdom and being ruled by despots?
This young lady needs to look at the bigger picture and ask herself what sort of life she would have had without industrialisation.
Tony