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Slackers of the world, unite

09 Feb 2022 | OP ED Watch

Speaking of chasing dragons, never mind the massive revolt Extinction Rebellion believes it will create in Britain on April 1, to the delight of everyone currently reaching for the smelling salts over disruptive Canadian and now international truckers’ protests against COVID mandates. Greta Thunberg has scheduled The Revolution for March 25, not just climate but like you know man the whole cosmic New Jerusalem one. And while CO2 will be first against the wall it will be crowded there: “Join us and strike for climate reparations and justice, demand that the people in power prioritise #PeopleNotProfit!” Oh that’s original. Precise. And ever so workable.

As we warned the former child star, like Jeanne d’Arc Ms. Thunberg is finding it hard to dismount the tiger of early radical fame. Now it’s not enough to save the planet from GHGs. Oh no. “The catastrophic climate scenario that we are living in is the result of centuries of exploitation and oppression through colonialism, extractivism and capitalism, an essentially flawed socio-economic model which urgently needs to be replaced.” Extractivism. Boo.

A global celebrity in her early teens, and still styling her hair as if but a child, Thunberg too is chasing a receding thrill without which life may seem bleak and unbearably ordinary. She now gets an insufficient jolt from merely saving the entire Earth by preventing emissions from rising so we don’t all roast, cook or whatever overheated metaphor you want to apply to another 0.9°C by 2100. Instead “Guided by historical struggles and lived experiences, led by the most affected people and areas (MAPA), we are demanding climate reparations.”

Thus will everyone demand repayments from… everyone. Not only must advanced countries now absorb the colossal economic damage of getting rid of fossil fuels. They must also from the smouldering wreckage of the treasury find enough lucre to provide some unmentionable amount of money to everyone else who, alas, won’t be able to lift themselves by their own bootstraps because Greta and her ilk forced energy poverty on the Third World.

Is the thrill back yet? No. Dang it. We need more. Much more. So it’s going to happen “[n]ot as charity, but as a transformative justice process in which political power will return to the people. This should not be in the form of loans, but a follow through on the demands from Indigenous, black, anti-patriarchal and diverse marginalized communities to get their lands back, giving resources to the most affected communities by the climate crisis for adaptation, loss and damages – a redistribution (and in most cases, collectivization) of wealth, technology, information, care work, and political power both from the north to the south, and from top to bottom.”

Wow. Political power will return to the people. We wonder when she thinks they ever had it. Perhaps under Magna Carta? No. Boo. First World. Pol Pot, then? Or is it just a word salad suitable for shouting through the gas mask the noble youth is alas obliged to wear in this exciting future of bad economics, scientific ignorance and mind-bogglingly petulant arrogance.

One wonders if the mainstream people cheerfully endorsing Thunberg in the hopes that her halo will cast a sickly secondary glow onto them have any idea what she’s started saying, or the historical record attached to those who said such things previously. For instance arise ye prisoners of starvation or there will literally be no planet thanks to Ozzie and Harriet plus John D. Rockefeller or some such undergraduate fantasy. “Climate struggle is class struggle, for years, the ruling class, primarily through corporations and governments from the Global North dominated by affluent, white, heterosexual cis-males, have exercised their power, gained through colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy and exploitation, to destroy the earth and its occupants with no remorse.”

Yeesh. Are we ever bad people. Heteronormatively cis and patriarchal to boot, as well as white and white supremacist. And in case fixing this appalling mess sounds like work, don’t worry. They provide a handy “Profile Picture Generator” you can use to do it all on Twitter.

5 comments on “Slackers of the world, unite”

  1. Greta 'Not-a-climate-scientist' Thunberg. Is now "not an economist' either. ( although I do agree that the trans-global mega corporations are generally having their way with us...:>(

  2. A lot of this slush is coming out of academia. Do you ever get the feeling that academia is staring at the jagged rocks at the foot of a very tall cliff from which they are about to be kicked off when the world wakes up and realizes they are surplus to requirements? Phrases such as heteronormative white supremacist patriarchy are rather like the howling and screeching of monkeys in the treetops as they hurl their faeces at you, and of about as much significance.

  3. Greta is the intellectual equivalent of Justin Trudeau and as such, both make excellent vessels for doing the bidding of those wild and crazy (actually dour and ideologically obsessed) elites with names like Schwab, Gates, Carney, and Soros.

  4. This reminds me of the title to what is perhaps Thomas Sowell's greatest work--THE VISION OF THE ANOINTED: SELF-CONGRATULATION AS A BASIS FOR SOCIAL POLICY. Forget that capitalism fed by fossil fuels has lifted billions out of abject poverty around the world, and even that it has provided an average standard of living today that would have been the envy of past emperors. No, we must bring this all crashing down and return to the lifestyle of cave dwellers so that the 21st century self-righteous can bask in the glory of their virtuousness. Too bad such basking can't so much as power a lightbulb.

  5. # has, for a very long time, been a symbol for pound (lb) making her slogan much more accurate than she realizes: Pound people, not profits is exactly the results she’s asking for and the foreseeable result if she were to get it.

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