Greta Thunberg - Our House Is on Fire - Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

If they really want to save the world they should start by getting a proper diploma so that everything can follow its right and proper order. Then they can continue studying to be engineers and scientists so that in ten or fifteen years they can enter the working world and make a real difference.

The critics don’t seem to want to absorb that it’ll be too late by then.

Because for them this type of climate crisis – the type that requires action and change – does not exist. And herein, I guess, lies the ingenious nature of the school strike.

It is as simple and provocative as it needs to be.

The clock is ticking. Time is running away from us, and what can illustrate this better and more clearly than our own children’s education?

What should they study to be?

And why?

The time we have left to act and to fundamentally change society is suddenly shorter than an average elementary and high-school education.

And when no sea-change is in the offing…

What should the children do then?

When they’re being robbed of their most basic conditions for existence?

They can’t vote, after all.

Much less can they influence industry, science, the mass media or political decisions.

Those who are most affected have no influence.

Our comfort is suddenly being set against their future.

All those things we have to get to do.

Our recreational interests against their survival.

Our growth at the expense of their world.

Our hobbies against their fundamental human rights.

It’s tragic enough that for a long time we’ve been doing the exact same thing to people in poorer parts of the world.

But that argument doesn’t sink its teeth in, apparently.

Because we obviously don’t care.

Screw them.

On the other hand, the majority of us can’t ignore our own children and grandchildren as easily.

The school strike seems to be working.

The tension between our excess and the inheritance we’re going to leave to future generations creates exactly the friction and resistance needed to generate new debate and new emotions.

New angles.

To be sure, this is quite unintentional.

Because these things can’t be planned.

They simply happen.

One attempt in a million.

Or perhaps a billion.

The striking children say that the solution to the crisis is to treat it as a crisis. Not exactly a new thought when it comes to the climate crisis – it’s been out there for decades.

But it’s not really about that. It has never really been about presenting new options or solutions.

It’s about the vast majority of people wanting to carry on as usual.

Our human fear of change.

And the fact that that driving force happens to coincide with the preservation of the status quo, to the advantage of those who are the most privileged, is quite practical for those who happen to be part of that exclusive little group.

Their ability to engage so many angry, bitter, underpaid and exploited men to fight on their side is and will remain a fascinating phenomenon.

A kind of Catch-22 for humanity that perhaps isn’t quite as mysterious as one would think.

Because if you’re one of the winners in the prevailing world order, then naturally you’ll go to great lengths to defend it. And what could be better than getting the losers in that prevailing world order to fight for the same cause?

‘Losing’ is, of course, relative and in this particular instance we are all more or less losers.

The recruitment base is practically unlimited and the secret is so simple. All you have to do is get as many people as possible to defend their little part of the universe.

Their job. Their home. Their holiday. Their car. Their money.

It’s about scaring as many people as possible with the threat of change and decline. And doing it to such an extent that in principle they are prepared to do anything to stand up for their own microscopic part of this gigantic world.

To defend the prevailing food chains against anything and anyone that poses a threat to that stability.

Immigrants, refugees, liberals, socialists, feminists and activists.

The method is as simple as it is effective.

As brilliant as it is completely idiotic.

Greta provokes. In certain cases to such an extent that normally respectful people lose their composure. Not only does she say that everything has to change, she has autism too. And she has the gall to brag about it.

That’s not how things are supposed to work.

The two things are incompatible – even if subconsciously – with the contempt for weakness of certain human ideologies and opinions.

They’re incompatible with the competitive society’s unwritten manifesto that says the strongest always win.

It is the strongest who will be heard.

It is the strongest who will set the agenda.

Such are the laws of the market, the jungle, the universe.

But on the cobblestones in front of the Swedish Parliament, suddenly other rules apply.

The invisible girl who never says anything is suddenly the one who is heard and seen the most. And apparently that is far too disturbing for everyone to let slide.

The hate grows stronger with each passing minute.

Stories, lies and personal attacks.

But the primary weapon of course is the deliberate omission of facts .

Greta’s background and story are public knowledge on the internet and with a simple search you can read up on all the relevant, accepted facts. But what do those matter when the lie is much more entertaining? When the deliberate omission of facts gets more readers?

The days go by, and suddenly Greta has been sitting there for two weeks.

Every morning she cycles off to Parliament and parks her bike by the iron railings in front of Rosenbad.

Every morning she meets the rest of us.

We who are busy with other things.

Sitting in our cars and listening to our radio programmes.

Standing with our mobile phones on the metro.

Sitting on buses and daydreaming.

Talking about the food we’ve eaten and the football we’ve watched.

Cleaning our houses and our apartments.

Washing our windows, arranging our pillows and sorting our bookshelves.

We who assume that everything is more or less as it should be.

The Guardian comes by and publishes the first major interview in the foreign media. Some Norwegian and Danish media have already written stories but this is next level.

Greta tells her story to anyone who asks. She answers all the questions and devotes what time is left to her books.

Everyone thinks that Greta’s immense public journey started on the cobblestones outside the Swedish Parliament on 20 August 2018.

But that’s not so.

It started much earlier.

I go back to an earlier post I made on Facebook. It has over 11,000 likes and Greta is being praised in hundreds of comments. She inspires hope and everyone seems to be taking in her words and thoughts. The post is nothing new. And it has nothing to do with her school strike.

It was written early on the morning of 9 November 2016 and it has never been edited.

That morning Stockholm was covered in over half a metre of fresh snow. A few hours earlier Svante had crawled off the couch to take cover on the floor because it felt as if ‘an ice-cold wind passed through the apartment’ when the election barometer suddenly turned from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.