Tag: Greta Thunberg

Doctor-to-Be of Theology

“The year 2023 is the centenary of the passing of the Freedom of Religion Act in Finland,” writes “conferer” Martti Nissinen, promoting a future ceremony of the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Theology — in which one degree will go to . . . Greta Thunberg.

Much has been made, online, of theologians, of all people, awarding an honorary degree to a young environmental activist demonstrating no academic much less godly accomplishments. The obvious suggestion: “what she’s selling is a religion”!

But what stands out to me? Mr. Nissinen’s declaration of this year’s ceremonial theme: “Freedom.”

Ms. Thunberg has been pestering and entreating leaders of the world to “do something” to “save the planet” from “climate change.”

What she demands is not freedom, but more

taxes
mandates
prohibitions.

Whatever the actual threat may be, there is no hint of freedom in her agenda. And if you want more of that message, consult the latest alarm from the IPCC.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a bizarre restatement of past pronouncements, warning “that we are almost half way through the ‘last chance decade’ to pull the brakes on climate change.”

“The world is only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” explains The Guardian. “On current trends, we will shoot past the target within a decade.”

Dooming the planet.

Pushing this fake “global accepted goal” has a historical context. Many similar past warnings that haven’t come true. But, more pressingly, the worldwide panic over a pandemic that even to politicians increasingly appears to be a complete failure of the experts.

Why trust the Expert Climatologists when the Expert Epidemiologists have so disastrously failed us?

Just don’t ask Dr. Greta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Mad Prophetess?

The latest scandal of the How Dare You Say That!?! variety features The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, who is banned from Fox News, we learn, because he characterized the celebrated “climate activist” Greta Thunberg as “mentally ill.”

He said it while serving as one of those invited talking heads. The other guest immediately cried “how dare you?”

And censoriousness ensued, with high moral dudgeon and nasty put-downs and the whole shebang.

While I don’t really know much about Miss Thunberg’s mental health going into all this, I do not believe it can be much improved by playing Prophetess on the world stage.

Which also gives too much cultural power to someone so young. And since power corrupts . . . that’s not good for Greta, and it makes her promoters corruptors.

And that is the point Mr. Knowles appeared to be trying to make. Reasonable people can disagree on the propriety of how “the execrable Michael Knowles” (as his fellow Daily Wire colleagues jovially refer to him) referred to the Swedish prophetess, of course. But it nevertheless remains rather shocking to witness

activist adults abuse
one child to
scare millions of children to
pressure powerful adults to
engage in precipitous policy action.

“Adults sometimes like to use children to carry their messages,” vidcaster and Dilbert creator Scott Adams points out, “because it makes it hard for the other side to criticize them without seeming like monsters.”

How can we “listen to the scientists,” as Miss Thunberg recently implored, if the talking is being done by a young teenage non-scientist?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Listen to the Warm

I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?

On Wednesday, the 16-year-old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement.

She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”

You know, for “real action.”

It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”

And then the non-scientist spoke . . . not very expansively.

Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.

Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing . . . exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Ominous Linkages

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

What does a 16-year-old Swedish girl have in common with a popular 29-year-old U.S. Representative?

Environmentalism and socialism.

The young woman is Greta Thunberg, who spear-headed a “global movement of schoolchildren striking to demand climate change action.” The Representative is AOC, er, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who last month launched her “Green New Deal.”

Sixteen-year-old Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rep. AOC hasn’t been nominated yet, but if Barack Obama could be awarded a Nobel merely for being elected. . . .

But back to that linkage: the Swedish youngster was nominated by three adult members of the Socialist Left Party; AOC calls herself a socialist.*

But what’s the deeper link?

The solution, apparently: socialists want to destroy capitalism, or at least commandeer it; and environmentalists obsessed about anthropogenic global warming believe it’s caused by burning fossil fuels and by bovine flatulence — both made worse by capitalism, which has allowed the masses (not just the elites) to harness petroleum for power as well as raise gigantic herds of cattle for eating and milk-production. The direct control that socialism entails serves, say its advocates, as the only way to curtail carbon emissions.

A more likely story? Socialism would make us so much poorer that it is inconceivable that most of us would be able to afford to drive cars or eat steaks or drink milk.

Regardless of their so-called “green” policy obsessions, Ms.Thunberg and Rep. AOC are green in a more profound sense, of lack of experience — the latter because she’s young, the former because she’s a miseducated ideologue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It is also worth noting that the much of AOC’s much-ballyhooed Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with typical leftist social engineering.