Sixteen year old Greta Thunberg scored some major points at the WEC this week. Since, as she and the rest of the world suspected, none of the wealthy elite who make up the WEC delegates stood up to be counted, I'd say the score is Thunberg-1, Wealthy Elite-0. Is anyone surprised? If there's no money in it for them the wealthy elite are not going to play.
I must admit that I find it rather amusing that older generations will ridicule the younger generations for not caring or participating, and then when they do the gray haired old farts get their noses bent out of shape and start yelling that the kids should stay in school and leave serious decision-making to them. (Like they're really going to do anything. LOL) I'm an old fart and I can see the temptation. I'm also reminded that the old farts of the 1960s were saying the same thing about me and my generation as we hit the streets, but we made a difference. The gray haired old white men in Congress back then knew what needed to be done. They just didn't want to do it until we forced them.
Greta Thunberg is a good example of this phenomena. There are plenty of gray haired old farts and financial elite at the World Economic Conference (WEC) being held in Davos, Switzerland. In challenging the WEC delegates to really do something about climate change instead of talk and traveling the world in their high polluting private jets (which by the way put an average of 1,102 pounds per passenger per hour of CO2 into the atmosphere and have an average cost of $1,611 per hour to fly), Thunberg laid the blame squarely in the laps of the world's biggest capitalists and financial elite sitting right in front of her. "Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people."
From the reports I read that was received with resounding silence which says to me, as a retired psychotherapist, that they knew they had been caught. When people, whether actually guilty or not, truly feel that they are being wrongly accusation, they will react and object. When a person(s) knows that the accusation against them is true, they get very quiet. Mothers, you know exactly what I mean. What happens when you wrongly accuse your child of something and/or they truly believe they were right? Don't they throw a hissy fit, scream, yell, etc.? Mine did. What happens when you accuse them of something and they know they are guilty and have been caught? Silence. These guys might be the financial elite of the world, but they're still human (or so I'm led to believe) and will react as such. They weren't quiet because they didn't like what she said, or didn't think she was right. They were silent because they knew she had exposed them.
What was particularly sad was that she expressed a feeling that I suspect most of the world watching the WEC shares. She said, "I don't believe for one second that you will rise to that challenge, but I want to ask you all the same."
You can bluster all you want about a sixteen year old telling the world's financial elite that they are amoral and should pull up their big boy/girl panties and do what they know is right. We all know prefectly well that she's right. You can fulminate about how she doesn't have the experience, education, etc., to talk to such a distinguished group of world leaders as she did. You can say anything you want. Besides the fact that she is right, and we all know it, she has become a voice of the generation whose future, or lack thereof, is totally controlled by people who can't think beyond profit and power today. She has become the voice of the generation whose future, or lack thereof, is being totally and absolutely ignored.
With young people around the world responding to Greta, we can only live in hope that they, like we did in the 60s, will prevail and force those in power to do the right thing. If we can't live in that hope, we will die in dispair.
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