Greta Thunberg: Britain has a “Mind-Blowing Historical Carbon Debt”

Greta Thunberg Michael Gove
Greta Thunberg Left, Michael Gove, Right

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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J Mac
April 24, 2019 12:16 pm

Part of her scripted speech to the MPs:
https://youtu.be/FwY06xE24Es

mikewaite
April 24, 2019 12:18 pm

In 1926 the Conservative Prime Minister signed the Electricity supply Act that , for the first time established a national electrical supply system for the UK , replacing a ramshackle system of over a hundred separate private companies . It was achieved through the design , engineering and draughting skills of a team of highly qualfied men and women and a well organised work force. A similarly highly qualified team built the world’s first nuclear power station for domestic use , in 1956.
Now our engineering policies are dictated not by our own skilled scientists and engineers but by a foreign teenager, classified as being “in special needs” and totally without any maths or scientific qualifications.
And the man prepared to put the future of 60+ million people and the world’s 6th or 7th largest economy entirely in the hands of this unqualified , poorly educated teenager is a former Minister of Education and aspires to be a PM.
This is a dreadful time to be British, and it can only get worse.

April 24, 2019 12:18 pm

I would like to ask her how zhe intends to get back to Sweden after foregoing all of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, and I mean every single one.

DHR
April 24, 2019 12:20 pm

So how did she get to London? Walk? Swim? How about an airplane? And what powered the airplane?

BC
Reply to  DHR
April 24, 2019 3:25 pm

Viking longboat?

April 24, 2019 12:24 pm

How far back does Greta wish to go when looking for blame?

As the Swedish Vikings (the Rus) were great travellers, Greta’s ancestors (and probably mine as I have a British ancestry) could be taken into account. Was Stevenson of ‘Rocket’ fame of Viking descent?

Have to go now – my 10 year old is explaining to me how the Mars mission should be financed and organised with non-fossil fuels /sarc

Davis
April 24, 2019 12:29 pm

I’ll take the longer lifespan due to technology, thank you, she can live and die as a pre industrialist.

http://www.legacy.com/life-and-death/home.html

Paul Penrose
April 24, 2019 12:31 pm

According to her logic, mankind would have been much better off remaining unindustrialized, were all but a very few live brutish, short lives filled with misery, work, and little joy. I hope she understands that in such a world, an Aspie like her would not have had a place in society. If she had even been allowed to live, it would have been a very sad and painful life. Only wealthy societies can afford to even attempt to treat everybody with compassion and dignity.

TIm Groves
Reply to  Paul Penrose
April 24, 2019 7:11 pm

The pre-industrial world may have been tougher physically than today’s Mecca of Convenience, but it was probably no more miserable. Miserable is a state of mind, and miserable people such as grumpy Greta would not have fared very well in such a world, while those with a good sense of humor would have done much better.

The person who first put together “brutish” and “short” was the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who wrote a century before the start of the Industrial Revolution (although not before the start of industry, obviously) describing the natural state of mankind.

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

YouBrexitYouPay4It.
Reply to  TIm Groves
April 24, 2019 10:13 pm

I’ve been looking into hunter-gatherer societies recently – they live longer, healthier, happier lives, with significantly more leasure time than agricultural or modern lifestyles. Or so it is alleged by “scientists”, anyway.

It would appear that the benefit of an agricultural society is that it allowed for the dominance by a king, who lives off the labour of others. Perhaps the mad child is right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Paul Penrose
Reply to  YouBrexitYouPay4It.
April 25, 2019 10:03 am

Try it some time. You won’t live longer, nor will you have more leisure time. The struggle to find food and keep from being killed by other predators will take up most of your time.

Paul Penrose
Reply to  TIm Groves
April 25, 2019 10:00 am

Infant mortality was much higher before the industrial age. People died of simple infections (especially oral) and diseases which are easily controlled by vaccines today would regularly run rampant killing large percentages of pre-industrial populations. Few people lived to ages over 50 or 60, and most of those were pretty feeble. People with even minor disabilities, physical or mental, didn’t usually survive long unless they were born to a very wealthy family. Yeah, I’m sure people were much happier then – not!

Reply to  Paul Penrose
April 25, 2019 4:17 am

A female aspie would be in a nunnery shut away and not allowed out.

ResourceGuy
April 24, 2019 12:43 pm

This could work in the grand money musical chairs of Green New Deal redistribution of global wealth. The Brits pay reparations to the world (because Greta says) and other countries pay reparations in turn for any other claims that come up (Booker says).

Vuk
April 24, 2019 12:45 pm

Athe other day I asked:
“Has the world gone mad?”
Today it appears that the answer is self-evident.

Reply to  Vuk
April 24, 2019 3:01 pm

Vuk
There is a difference between lacking intelligence and going mad. There is a large global social vacuum and these followers of “preserving our future” are filling it.

How is climate change fear used. From the child of a close friend.
During the recent Christchurch mosque attack schools were in lock-down and huddled into a small group in a darkened classroom with all the curtains drawn. The teenage children asked the teacher – what is happening? The teacher replied “Its climate change”. Fear ran through the teens as they thought that the world outside was uninhabitable, as it is constantly in the media, what of their parents? They then used their cell phones and found what was really happening, with a sense of relief.

A 16 year old speaking in the tone and style like Greta on a foreboding subject has a profound effect on a lot of people.
Regards

Pat bols
April 24, 2019 12:46 pm

Every culture comes to an end because of internal problems. Our great western one is about to be destroyed by people who have no clue what it took to build it.
Maybe the Notre Dame fire was an imminent symbol of this.
That Swedish school kid is an example of how cultures self destruct. We do not need an external enemy anymore.

alexei
Reply to  Pat bols
April 24, 2019 8:39 pm

“We do not need an external enemy anymore.”
But we have that as well, although the enemy of our civilisation is both external and internal since the West has chosen to import its enemy into its societies, with the full knowledge of its unconcealed aims.

TruthMatters
Reply to  Pat bols
April 24, 2019 11:54 pm

As you say, when understanding of the virtues and values that were required to achieve it are forgotten, then the same virtues and values which must maintain and preserve it no longer prevail. That’s how a renaissance dies out.
But it can be rebooted in a single generation.
The Crown of Creation project will instantiate an irrevocable renaissance.
There is no cure for stupid but there is 100% immunization if treated before infection of psychological pathogens.
In 3 pages can be delivered what’s been promised for 2000 years.
Watch it happen.

ResourceGuy
April 24, 2019 12:47 pm

A new global game has just been created–Greta Says. The Brits are going wild over it.

Greta says jump….and they all jumped.
Greta says ________ …. and all the ad sponsors jumped.

LdB
Reply to  ResourceGuy
April 25, 2019 12:18 am

She is just a younger and stupidier version of occasional cortex.

Hugs
Reply to  LdB
April 25, 2019 12:20 pm

Don’t be cruel. Her parents made her what she is. Stupid does not go along with a cult.

Joey
April 24, 2019 12:48 pm

We are now taking our marching orders from clowns like that? Good God.

fretslider
April 24, 2019 12:49 pm

Interesting stuff

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex [ACT I]
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Youth Co-optation [ACT II]
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/category/articles-2019/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-inconvenient-truth-behind-youth-cooptation/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Most Inconvenient Truth: “Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart” [ACT III]
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/category/articles-2019/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-most-inconvenient-truth-capitalism-is-in-danger-of-falling-apart/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The House is On Fire! & the 100 Trillion Dollar Rescue [ACT IV]
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-house-is-on-fire-the-90-trillion-dollar-rescue-part-iv/

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The New Green Deal is the Trojan Horse for the Financialization of Nature [ACT V]
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-new-green-deal-is-the-trojan-horse-for-the-financialization-of-nature/

April 24, 2019 12:49 pm

I wonder, did Greta walk (and swim) from her home to London?

I expect that she flew in one of the large carbon emitters against which she ranting.

quaesoveritas
Reply to  Brooks Hurd
April 24, 2019 12:53 pm

She could have come via the Channel Tunnel

Greg
Reply to  Brooks Hurd
April 24, 2019 1:11 pm

Best to check your facts before sounding off on the basis of assumption. It can go wrong and make you look stupid.

Paul Penrose
Reply to  Greg
April 24, 2019 2:27 pm

It doesn’t even matter, because you can be sure she used fossil fuels one way or the other, whether it was plane, boat, or automobile.

Hugs
Reply to  Paul Penrose
April 25, 2019 12:27 pm

The French electric trains run by uranium. Danish trains run by Norwegian rainwater paid in cinnamon buns. But her life in general depends on fossils including nuclear power in Sweden. And she has no real clue what would happen without fossils.

April 24, 2019 12:51 pm

I would like to put up s defence of the United Kingdom. Over half of all “Carbon Emissions” since the Industrial Revolution have been during the last 30 thirty years. Of those only a few percent willbhave been by the UK. Many nations followed the UK down the industrialisation road, France, Germany and USA amongst others. So I’d say that the UK is unlikely to be streets ahesd in the emissions league table. Nor can the the UK be blamed if every nation on earth thought the Industrial Revolution was a good idea.

ResourceGuy
April 24, 2019 12:53 pm

Put the knife down from your throat Britain and let’s talk. I’m a trained crisis intervention professional and we can work this out. You have others that care about you……

max
April 24, 2019 12:53 pm

before I turned 18, I had heard that –
We were going to run out of oil before 2000.
Ronald Reagan was going to get us into a nuclear war with the USSR.
Nuclear winter would kill any of us who survived.
Swine flu was going to be an epidemic of biblical proportions.
AIDS was going to be an epidemic of biblical proportions.
The world was about to enter an ice age (caused by pollution)
The world population (human) was growing too quickly, and the world would not be able to supply all of us with food.
The hole in the ozone was going to allow in too much radiation, and turn the world into a wasteland.
The rainforests were being destroyed at an alarming rate, and would soon be gone, destroying all humanity, and leaving the world short of oxygen, due to lack of photosynthesis.

It was only a few years later, we were told that the earth was going to heat up catastrophically, and wipe us all out.

There is always somebody foretelling the end of the world, but it just never seems to happen. Many of the predictions listed above were made by scientists, sure in their data, and caring only about our continued existence. Or not. Experience is the cruelest teacher, but sadly, for some, she is the only teacher.

April 24, 2019 12:53 pm

Practically every item, product and service in this brat’s life was available to her because of the industrial revolution. Her travel, her microphone, her clothing, food, shelter, healthcare and more.

She should spend a little time reflecting on what her life would be like without ANY of those things.

She’ be living in rags in a primitive hut spending most of her waking hours hunting or gathering her food, carrying her (quite dirty) water and chopping trees for heating.

Reply to  Mike Smith
April 24, 2019 5:12 pm

She has spent way too much time reflecting about this reality, but she is too selfish to admit she is part of the real world.

Her parents are entertainers. They contribute nothing substantive to their society & yet they are better off than her school mates.

When she became aware of this reality, at a very young age, she could not reconcile her guilt/selfishness, and she became the emotionally stunted adolescent drone that she is.

April 24, 2019 12:54 pm

I’m sure Greta walked, rode a bike, and took a sailing ship to Britain, right? Like when she was just at the EU in Bonn? And met the Pope in Italy?

CD in Wisconsin
April 24, 2019 12:55 pm

“…She finished to a standing ovation and cheers, then sat quietly as the panel of senior politicians gave their responses. Several appeared chastened…”

To me, there is something very perverse and odd about making a 16-year old into some kind of female deity or high priestess as we are seeing now. As Greta Thunberg becomes the subject of cult-like worship by both children and adults alike, the fact that we are supposed to be dealing in a scientific issue here (CAGW) becomes totally lost in the mire.

One can only imagine skeptic climate scientists trying to explain to Ms. Thunberg the scientific issues with the alarmist narrative in the hopes that she will understand them. Perhaps it won’t matter if she understands the issues or not, because the cult around her is already well-established and likely does not tolerate dissent. Cults, as I understand them, rarely do.

I am mystified by the mindset of adults who willingly become part of a cult with a child at its center. There is little doubt that Ms. Thunberg has the image of innocence and the speaking skills to draw in a lot of people. And the mainstream media, as cheer leaders in all of this, have the means to spread the faith and reach out to all of those who are ready to join in. It is disturbing however to see that there are many people in this world who lack a level of intelligence to step back, rationally look at all of this from a distance and question what is really going on.

Those who do look at all of this with a sigh and a sense of despair can take comfort in knowing that the climate scare still ranks quite low on the public’s list of priorities despite the media’s best efforts to move it up. Still, cults are much easier to form these days thanks to the Internet, along with the co-operation of the MSM, science and academia and govts around the world. The environmental NGO’s and the IPCC have no doubt discovered this. They can take comfort in knowing there is still insufficient effort to totally discredit them and undo everything they’ve done. Sensationalizing a 16-year old Swedish girl who steps up to help maintain the faith is certainly a BIG help in that regard.

PhilUK
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
April 25, 2019 2:55 am

We are well used to Skeptics being denied a voice in the MSM. Lately it has become apparent that only the most extreme [ Extinction Rebellion, Climate Strikes, AOC, Greta ] voices are now allowed on the MSM – with never any questioning of anything they say. Even those in-tune with the global warming narrative – but have not fallen for the false 12 year to doom narrative – now do not even get any airtime!

Old Woman of the North
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
April 25, 2019 2:52 pm

Joan of Arc comes to mind.

Joel Snider
April 24, 2019 1:00 pm

Did anyone else see ‘Children of the Corn?’

James Clarke
Reply to  Joel Snider
April 25, 2019 7:35 am

Scary stuff! Not the movie. That was stupid and fiction. The above article is reality, and it literally terrifies me! If the story of Greta and the MP’s was fiction, I would find it ridiculous and unbelievable. The fact that it actually happened makes me quake for the future of humanity.

Are we witnessing the death of rational thought? Who, in their right mind, would demonize the Renaissance and long for the Dark Ages?

Joel Snider
Reply to  James Clarke
April 26, 2019 12:41 pm

Someone who has been taught not to appreciate it.

Bruce Cobb
April 24, 2019 1:00 pm

The world has turned upside down. A brainwashed idiot child is lecturing supposed adults, and they are actually listening to her. Beam me up, Scotty.

fretslider
April 24, 2019 1:01 pm

Piers Corbyn got it right when he tweeted…

Listening to an ignorant brainwashed child is deranged.
I am an actual scientist of physics, meteorology, astrophysics and climate and say @GretaThunberg is wrong and suffers mental abuse by manipulative adults.

Pushy eco-parents.

Quaesoveritas
Reply to  fretslider
April 24, 2019 1:22 pm

I would like to see a debate between Greta Thunberg and Piers Corbyn but it isn’t going to happen on British tv

fretslider
Reply to  Quaesoveritas
April 24, 2019 1:33 pm

Piers Corbyn or any other sceptical scientist on the BBC?

That’s termed false-balance, because sceptics usually have a winning argument.

April 24, 2019 1:08 pm

The madness just gets worse and worse.