The socially acceptable hatred towards Greta Thunberg et al

Of course she can choose to campaign for anything she wants to. But if you take an oversimplistic approach to one cause, then move to another to do the same it does undermine your credibility.

I find it strange that people are calling Greta “plain”. In the first instance her looks are not the most important of her many attributes. Secondly, to me she looks absolutely beautiful - but of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I like natural faces. However, the most notable thing about Greta at the moment is her courage. She is exposing herself to immense risk by taking part in the flotilla. There have already been two drone strikes on it. Ten people were killed on a previous flotilla. To a certain extent the fact that she and Mandla Manela (Nelson Mandela’s grandson) have significant public recognition provides some, I hope, protection to those on the flotilla, in that the potential risk of adverse publicity will reduce the incentive to harm them. However, the drone strikes don’t augur well.

But the Paris agreement, although not solving the entire problem, would at least keep world heating below the catastrophic 2 degrees.

We do know how to implement the Paris agreement. Countries have already laid out how to do this.

The solution is that world governments implement what is already been agreed.

No, I think you’re just being ridiculous. You’re saying that because she campaigned on climate change when she was younger, she cannot care about anything else.

She has been vocal about how important it is to take climate action. She is also being vocal about how disgusting the current situation in Palestine is and that action must be taken. She hasn’t once said she no longer cares about the other.

I do actually agree about nuclear power - and in general think that technological solutions are the only feasible effective response with humanity as it is. Slightly off topic though.

For most people it doesn’t but it does if you are the figurehead of a specific cause. Especially if those causes aren’t complementary.

Agree, it's absolutely dreadful. She's so young as well

Ah, in that case, I completely agree.

I don’t think it’s because she’s female though - by which I mean, I don’t think that her (possible?) deviation from the female stereotype of kind and stupid (to paraphrase) is the problem. I think the fact that she is presenting herself as something she is not, is the problem. I personally would feel the same if she was a 22 year old boy who had done the same thing.

No, I think that’s people stereotyping her because she’s a young woman.

It is totally possible to care about more than one issue at a time. For example, I care deeply about Gaza and the inequalities in this country. Caring about one of those doesn’t detract from caring about the other.

Well quite. Stereotypes aren't about what you actually are or do, they're the perception. So she is trying to appear competent and people don't like it.

But it still weakens the message. And with Gaza she starts to look like an omnicause activist; someone who picks causes because they are popular (or is picked by causes because she is popular) rather than because of an underlying understanding of the issues she is campaigning for.

Is it socially acceptable, though? I don't think it is.

I find that a lot of this kind of stuff posted on social media is posted by people I would not associate with, who couldn't hold a conversation and are quite honestly not very bright.

I agree.

I don’t like it when children have precocity forced on them, either. When their parents project adult ideals and motivations onto them. It hasn’t ended well for Greta, as someone pointed out she hasn’t matured into looking for solutions, she’s still just like a child waiting for others to sort things out.

People love gifted, precocious children and they get a lot of attention, but it never ends well, does it?

But afaik she hasn’t moved away from it? She is just now also campaigning for something else alongside it. She was arrested last year at a climate protest. She was campaigning last month at an oil refinery

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/climate/article/2025/08/18/greta-thunberg-and-climate-activists-block-norway-oil-refinery_6744476_96.html

It's making some people's lives harder with no actual effect on the climate. The only way you change this is to change capitalism altogether, which seems unlikely.

Because communist countries are soo environmentally friendly…

The was to reduce emissions is to move to nuclear power.

Except that I think that what some people on this thread have a problem with is that, while she is articulate she is not competent - she continues to say that finding a solution to climate change (and by which I don’t mean, saying over and over again that fossil fuels are bad - we know this, but the stumbling block is how to unharness our planet from them without putting us back in the pre-industrial age, and causing untold suffering for the poorest) is for someone else to do.

Her role seems to be to be a somewhat empty figurehead. No, she doesn’t deserve to have criticism aimed at her looks or her autism. But educated people who are trying their best to save the planet don’t tend to like to be lectured by someone who appears to not know - and not want to know - the fine details of how to do that.

If a prominent activist moves away from campaigning for something they have told you is THE MOST important thing, to something else then you wonder why it is no longer so important, or if it never actually was.

And there was me thinking it was Greta herself who hated us.

It seems perfectly okay, applauded even, to mock her appearance, autism, advocacy, and anything else really.

I find the double standards of criticising people’s appearance odd. Why is it ok to mock the appearance of Queen Camilla - indeed any member of the royal family - or Donald Trump, Milania and so on but not ok to mock the appearance of Greta Thunberg or Diane Abbott for example.
Personally I think it’s a pretty weak way of insulting people - they can’t help what their faces look like and how they dress is up to them and doesn’t affect anyone else.

But the problem is that all the reducing carbon that normal people do will never come close to the levels required, whilst industry still pumps out greenhouse gases and makes no effort at all to stop.

It's making some people's lives harder with no actual effect on the climate. The only way you change this is to change capitalism altogether, which seems unlikely.

I mentioned the USA because Greta sailed there. The point is middle and low income people do fly on holiday to Spain - it's cheaper than holidaying in Devon for a start. A lot of the environmental initiatives would see middle income / poorer people have even more miserable lives whilst the rich carry on having a lovely time.

The growing inequality in wealth in the world is part of the problem. If you don't fix that you can't fix climate threats IMO.

I am a psychologist. In short, stereotypes are usually formed along two dimensions: competence and warmth.

Women tend to be popped into the high warmth and low competence category. When they step out of that and dare to appear competent then they get backlash for lacking warmth (cold hearted, ambitious, pointy elbowed etc.)

As a young woman, people expect her to be low competence and high warmth (smiley and compliant). But she tries to be high competence, expressing opinions (shock!) and claiming expertise so she gets backlash for that and she also presents as low warmth (presumably because her autism means she is slightly socially awkward).

So she is getting a double whammy of transgressing both warmth and competence expectations.

My point is that when she was a teenager I liked her, found her deeply sincere and moving, and thought her CC activism was effective. Now I think her CC activism is counter productive, I have doubts about her sincerity which I did not use to have plus I feel like she's changed from a moving naive teen to a deliberately obtuse adult and consequently I don't like her anymore (not that she cares, and rightly so).

This being said, abusing her for being plain and a woman is as unacceptable and misogynistic today as it was eight years ago. Actually, abusing her is unacceptable, point.

Poor people don't go to the USA, either by flying or by sea. Yet they have to face the consequences of the more affluent people who do. I am a poor person, I have never been to the USA. I don't own a car. I never will, and I wouldn't want to. I would like public transport to improve.

There are people in Asia and Africa who are much poorer than me. I can't afford air conditioning and they will be even less able to afford it. And they will need it more than I do in the UK.

I don't accept that if you have family in the USA then of course you should have a right to travel there. It's never been easier to keep in contact with people in any part of the world. If you really can't bear to be parted from someone then don't go.

So I agree with you that social inequality is a big issue here but I come to the opposite conclusions to you. We need to push forward with reducing CO2 precisely because if we don't poor people will be affected more by global warming.

Monbiot's stance against travel in general is truly environmentally progressive. I personally have witnessed him refusing to go to prestigious conferences he was invited to and offering to do talks via video link or not at all.

The problem is current climate activism is pretty cult like but fails to address the social inequality of most of the proposed solutions. Most prominent celebrity climate activists fly around the world (or take boats or trains using up energy they needn't if they stayed put) - but they want poorer people to have ever more limited and restricted lives (no cars only public transport, no holidays, never flying even if they're only flying once every 10 years, ignoring the fact that often holidays abroad are cheaper than in the UK) meantime large corporations fly their employees everywhere and rich people continue to go on holiday all the time.

If you're a true environmental activist you really need to do what you're telling other people to do. Your average working family in the UK doesn't have the time or money to sail to the USA. What if they have family in the USA? It's such a luxury elite action to sail to the US - who has money or time to do that?

And sailing - and the amounts of food / resources required to do so has an environmental impact. Maybe not as much as a plane, but some nonetheless. People will fly to the USA or wherever she is to see her. The best thing to do if she truly cared would be to refuse to attend all these climate summits abroad and encourage local activists who share her views to go instead.