The song in the video below goes out to Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier and all our other youths and children having to fight a grown-up’s battle.
I felt compelled to put this out there after having seen and heard all of the abuse that our teen climate warriors are getting on social media and elsewhere.
The header picture and the text inserted to the left in this post is from a comment on the song on my own Facebook page, and other comments were equally or more resentful, aggressively dismissive etc. It is just a tiny taste of what is wielded at Thunberg and her peers every day.
Davis Guggenheim called his documentary film, in which he followed Al Gore’s tireless work to raise climate awareness, ‘An inconvenient truth’. I think all of that anger and hatred directed at the messenger hails from a gnawing feeling of inconvenience. Being told that it is necessary to change one’s own way of life – that you will perpetuate the problem unless you choose to be the solution. For some it is even harder to be told by a girl, to be told by a child.
It is evident that “whataboutism” is a very big thing. Like in the gif referred to in the comment above one sees Greta Thunberg (white) sitting nicely on a train eating er lunch while two boys (of color), who seemingly have nothing, are running along outside looking in.
So, we are meant to understand that Greta is riding the gravy train while she has no regard for the other children on the planet.
However, I believe the contrary is the case: Thunberg is voicing her concern for the planet and the people on it, because many for some reason will listen to her. Whether her position is privileged compared to that of others misses the point.
But it goes on… And “whataboutism” is a staple in a lot of this online, vilifying rhetoric.
#NoPLanetB #Climateaction #DontShootTheMessenger
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