HOME INQUIRER Clear the air with some calm, rational discussionCHRIS KENNY Greta Thunberg addresses the Climate Action Summit at the United Nations General Assembly this week. AN HOUR AGO SEPTEMBER 28, 2019 Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email A speech’s quality is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. Even the pithy power of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address received mixed reviews, so that a century later some newspapers retracted their criticisms and recognised their misjudgments. Greta Thunberg’s speech is unlikely to be such a moment. But when the 16-year-old Swedish girl addressed the climate summit in New York, wild-eyed with anger and face contorted in anxiety, some people saw and heard informed courage and passion, while others discerned manic catastrophism and hysterical attention-seeking. The ABC (as, sadly, you would expect) was gushing. “Tonight, a call to action,” Juanita Phillips opened Sydney’s main television bulletin, referring to Thunberg’s speech, “an impassioned plea at the United Nations … she stared down the US President and delivered a scathing speech on climate change”. The propensity for adults to applaud all of this and talk about “inspiration” on the flimsiest of grounds was almost as disturbing as seeing the trauma on Thunberg’s face as she portrayed her dystopian outlook. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” Thunberg shrieked. She accused world leaders of failure, ignorance and betrayal. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” Yes, people are suffering and dying. They have done every day in history and will do so every day into the future. But the claim that climate change is making people suffer and die now is fallacious and deliberately apocalyptic. Thunberg talked about “irreversible chain reactions” and declared “we will never forgive you” and that “change is coming whether you want it or not”. Reason and perspective were shelved in favour of vitriol and emotion. Yet such is the superficiality of the digital age that when I googled her name it returned 127 million matches; and when I did the same for Abraham Lincoln the total fell short at 125 million — and Thunberg’s star is rising. Child psychologist Clare Rowe was so disturbed by Thunberg’s histrionics that she switched off her radio lest her children be traumatised. She has re-watched the speech. “I find it extremely uncomfortable as a child psychologist and as a mother,” Rowe said. “I kinda just want to go up on stage and give her a hug.” Parents needed to discuss the climate debate with their children, she said, and to shield them from the worst alarmism or they could be overwhelmed by anxiety. Rowe said children in Australia were falling victim to eco-anxiety. She said Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder would make Thunberg “quite literal” and create difficulty for her in managing emotions. “I think she absolutely believes in her heart of hearts that we’ve got 10 years left for this planet,” Rowe said, “and I am seeing that (fear) in my office for children under 10. We don’t want to make kids more anxious; they’ve got enough on their plate already.” It is worrying that the global warming movement would rely on teenage hysteria to draw attention to its cause. Few issues outside world wars have galvanised such a global conversation, so the eyes and ears of the world’s population are open — they don’t need this theatre. We need data, science, policy options and rational debate. The proponents for drastic action must not consider they have enough information or appropriate prescriptions to carry the argument, otherwise why would they resort to teenage catastrophism and emotive appeals? On one hand they say we should respect the science; on the other, they welcome Thunberg to the stage. It tells us all we need to know about the dumbing down of public debate. We should be telling Thunberg, her generation and other younger children about their good fortune because their victimhood and self-pity is grossly misplaced. Scott Morrison is right to call for rational climate education including the facts and what nations are doing, but there is a broader context. When I was born, 57 years ago today as it happens, Australian male life expectancy was just under 68 years; for boys born here today that expectation has grown to more than 80. The story of increasing life expectancy is even better for women. The World Health Organisation says women outlive men “all around the world” with the gap currently sitting at just over four years. Global life expectancy has increased by more than five years in the past decade, the fastest rise since the 1960s. Life expectancy (both sexes) in Australia now is 82 years and six months. In Sweden the expectation is about a month lower; is it that one month that so upsets Thunberg? Around the world, for every person who falls into poverty today, there are three who escape it. The Brookings Institution reports that last year the world moved beyond a crucial and positive tipping point: for the first time more than half the world’s population was middle class or rich. This means the proportion who are poor or vulnerable has been cut to a minority for the first time in human history; and remember this is happening while the world population continues to grow rapidly. The Sustainable Development Goals data tracker tells us that as recently as 1940 people who could read and write were in the global minority. By 1950 the literate made up 56 per cent of the world population, and now (again despite huge population increases) the global literacy rate is more than 86 per cent. Even the quality of our air has improved dramatically. Typically measured as sulphur dioxide emissions, global air pollution reached more than 150 million tonnes in the 80s and since then has been reduced by more than a third, with the reductions coming from the wealthy nations of Europe and North America. In 1950, only Western nations such as Australia, the US, Britain and Sweden had child mortality rates below 5 per cent. Now, those countries plus Russia, Japan, China and others have child mortality rates below 1 per cent, and most of Asia, South America, North Africa and the Middle East are below 5 per cent. In recent decades — since 1990 — the worldwide number of children dying from measles has fallen from 600,000 to 100,000 and diarrhoea deaths have been cut from 1.6 million to a third of that. Maternal deaths in childbirth have been reduced to a fraction of previous rates. In short, even though there are more of us, we are healthier, more prosperous, better educated and longer-lived than ever before. The air we breathe is cleaner. The richer we get, the more we spend on preserving our environments and we slow our rates of population growth. Along the way we improve technologies that boost health, increase enjoyment, conserve energy, reduce pollution and recycle products. You don’t have to be Pollyanna to see the clear trajectory of human development. Global warming might present a challenge. But the answer lies in science and technology, in debate and policy, in carefully considering theories against recorded facts, and in assessing costs and benefits, not in putting on the most overwrought displays or creating the greatest apprehension. Some simple observations expose the cant. How can the doomsday scenarios of the climate activists be taken seriously when they reject the emissions-free energy option of nuclear power? Why is there such fear generated over rising sea levels when falling sea levels have left historic ports stranded kilometres inland? Were coastlines ideal then or now, and who decides? Shouldn’t we be glad the climate refuses to warm in line with the modelling and that natural disasters are not discernibly worse or more frequent? If the Earth warms another degree will the reduced deaths from cold in the northern hemisphere grossly outweigh any increased heat stress deaths elsewhere? Will more land be productive or less? And why can’t these questions be discussed sensibly? NASA has reported how up to half the planet’s vegetated land has shown significant greening during the past four decades, mainly because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This has also been a factor in upward trends for agricultural crop yields. It is astonishing that we don’t hear more discussion about these benefits and how they can be harnessed further. After all, for all our focus on technology, we all know the greatest “carbon pollution” reduction machine has already been created — the tree. None other than the chief of the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation, Petteri Taalas, has warned the “extremists” and “doomsters” are the biggest threat in the climate debate. “It is not going to be the end of the world,” Taalas says. “The world is just becoming more challenging.” In my view, Thunberg is as much a victim of hyperbole as an agent of it. It should be impossible for adults to be as angry at her as she is at them; but some rise to the bait with ugly abuse. The over-reaction can be blamed partly on the nonsensical deification that comes from green-left activists and media. The ABC’s Newcastle station this week invited audiences to compare Thunberg’s speech with those of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy. She has more in common with Walter Mitty or Ferris Bueller. Ask not what Greta has done for the climate, ask what you can do for the climate debate. CHRIS KENNY ASSOCIATE
She's not the first to be exploited for an agenda. https://www.news.com.au/technology/...s/news-story/8e99d7fce5e0abae106ce73baa5209b7
HOME INQUIRER Kids caught in a climate of panicANGELA SHANAHAN Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks to Australian businessman Andrew Forrest in New York. Picture: AP 12:00AM SEPTEMBER 28, 2019 22 Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email Last week the great climate change strike by schoolchildren was on, and one intelligent young lady I know decided to go to the demonstration. She had permission, some of her other friends were going, they were only missing PE, and it might be fun to be at a demonstration — and there was the school dance that night. But to her disappointment the demonstration was full of clueless primary school kids and their excited mothers. It was, in her words, pretty lame so she and the other girls went off to have their hair done for the dance. That is definitely a normal, healthy teenager’s thought processes. But then there is Greta Thunberg. What good is the school dance, of fun, of youthful ephemera, if you are on the edge of extinction? “You should panic. Yes, it should be your constant state,” Greta cries, her young face straining to spit out imprecations of doom, a picture of sheer stress. Poor Greta appears far from being a normal teenager. The adult pundits commenting on Greta’s riveting performance at the UN — and she was riveting — appeal to our rational sense of proportion about climate change because climate change should be a topic of rational discussion, informed by science and, dare I say it, history, and of course a child can’t know all about that. But the Great Greta phenomenon is not about climate change, let alone the rational arguments about it. It is really about Greta and the girls who follow her. Oh yes, we should indeed be worried, even panic, not because of climate change but because of Greta. Greta is a sign of the times and Greta has a vast following among teenage girls. This girl is the embodiment of all that is wrong with modern teenagers, especially girls. She is the embodiment of adolescent anxiety, a phenomenon that propels pathologies from drug taking to transgenderism and suicide, yet parents and teachers are holding up this child as a role model to young people and especially to girls. Adults who are complicit in this should be ashamed and, yes, afraid of the consequences. Anxiety is a diagnosed illness affecting a huge number of young people. It can lead to suicide. The constant refrain among parents is: why does this happen in the richest, the most secure and the most privileged society that has existed? The really poor and the miserable in other places do not seem to suffer in this way. Perhaps it is because among the truly poor, adults and children alike are too busy trying to keep body and soul together. The children of the poor are too intent on bettering themselves. So, when we wonder why this happens, perhaps we need to look beyond ourselves. We live in a materialistic spiritual wasteland, so the Greta phenomenon gives affirmation to people who have a sense that they are missing something. There is indeed something greater than themselves, an almost spiritual cause to hang on to, something that changes the way we live, think and behave. However, the climate change cult, although often compared to a religious movement, is itself essentially a product of neo-Marxist materialism. So, unlike religion, which promises at least grace in the struggle leading to the salvation of the individual soul, the extreme cult of climate change looks only to the historical necessity of their triumph, saving the planet. It has much in common with the failed ideals of communism. The climate warriors constantly invoke science, but they are really ideologues. Climate extremism is also essentially negative because it is a product of extreme fear and anxiety. The message is: we have only one chance or else it is doom, Gotterdammerung awaits. Negative messages are not good for kids. This week in New York, Scott Morrison decried the anxiety imposed on children by climate change extremists. He also reminded people that there have been great existential disasters in the past and children have survived, although children are told that climate change is like no other great man-made disaster. Really? World War II seems to have disappeared from the consciousness of most parents and teachers. Who remembers the great anxiety around the possibility of another world war, the imminent possibility of nuclear war? “Ban the bomb” was the slogan du jour of the generation who had come to maturity during World War II and had seen the newsreels of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were afraid. Consequently, the threat of nuclear war hovered in the infant consciousness of the postwar generation. Then, as teenagers, all but a few became less preoccupied about it and, much like the girls who didn’t last at the school student strike, were too busy with exams and, naturally, having a good time to worry about possible nuclear annihilation. The Prime Minister was right to criticise the anxiety-producing mass hysteria of the Greta phenomenon. Many children today are peculiarly vulnerable to that hysteria. Nor do I think most people realise how anxiety is naturally heightened in children. A small thing can turn into a big thing in a child’s mind, and a big thing can become enormous, almost beyond childish fearful comprehension. There are grave consequences of imposing on impressionable children the burden of a threat to their existence, and climate change warriors, especially the adults who are complicit in this panic, should stop and think about what they are doing. By compounding the anxiety and fears of some young people, embodied in the image of a young girl called Greta Thunberg, they could be propelling the girl herself and many of her young followers to a dangerously unstable future
Yeah, and if you dont buy into the education the first time, they have special camps for you to be 're-educated'. The left is great at that.
%% She needs to buy or borrow the book; TOUGH Guys + Drama Queens. LOL + true...……………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………..