The socially acceptable hatred towards Greta Thunberg et al

[TeacakesFTW]

I’m not a fan of Greta per se (different generation and so on), but I hate the way that’s she treated.

It seems perfectly okay, applauded even, to mock her appearance, autism, advocacy, and anything else really. Why? Because she’s a young woman fighting for climate change?

Can anyone whack out their psychology/ sociology armchair and explain why so many people dislike her and why it’s socially acceptable to do so? I’d really like to hear some wise feminist thoughts on this.

Do we? Or is it like the Labour Party covering the countryside with solar panels so food has to be imported from abroad?

Israel is not doing well with the propaganda war, clearly.

But bringing it back to Greta, when I looked online I wasn’t expecting Hamas, or Hamas related organisations, to pop up as alleged funders for the flotilla. If the allegations are true, then I think that Greta is incredibly shortsighted.

At the risk of "lecturing" you can I point out that the UK has been a net food importer for over a century. There aren't that many solar panels on productive agricultural land although it is true we don't want to see a reduction in agricultural productivity.

Many years ago people were saying that carparks should have solar panels above them. Not only does this generate electricity but it helps keep the parked cars cooler. I was thinking about that recently and I thought why haven't we seen any.

Then I saw my first one. It's at the back of Gateshead council buildings. Why don't we see more of them? We could do better. We're not really trying.

I also think that when people say they don't like being lectured that's code for I want to do what's good for me in the short term, not what's good for society in the long term. If you've got one person in England who doesn't want to be lectured and one person in India who doesn't want to die in a heatwave, why do you think the person in England should have priority?

I feel sorry for her. She's 22 years old but still has a child's view of the world, and continually embarrasses herself globally with this. Her parents shouldn't have encouraged her to drop out of school.

I don’t mind her climate chat. It’s the Gaza nonsense that puts me off her.

I’m not a fan of Greta either and it’s disheartening that they mock her appearance instead of her lack of substance on the climate issue.

I most certainly don't hate her, I actually have sympathy for her, being a woman and the mother of an autistic child. This being said, I think her lack of life experience means she doesn't put forward any solutions to the very real problem of climate change so I don't see what more she's bringing to the issue, and I absolutely disagree with her forcing the Gaza issue with it. It actually makes me wonder whether she's as sincere about climate change as she was, or whether it's now just one of her claims to career and celebrity.

Having said the above, it's clear she gets an extra amount of mud thrown at her because of her being rather plain (as opposed to Camille Etienne for instance), which clearly makes the usual crowd of misogynists feel she's particularly fair target. And she is or was not afraid of being socially awkward (How dare you!) instead of behaving like a proper meek young lady. I actually miss that part! (The fearlessness, not the mud thrown at her obviously)

If you're autistic and obsessed, it's more than often the case, yes.

That’s a sweeping generalisation isn’t it? You’re saying that because Greta is autistic, she can only care about climate change?

I'm a big fan. The world is a mess, and it's her generation that will fix it. We need dozens more of her. I admire her bravery

Yes we really do. Scientists are very clear what we need to do to keep temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees.

Unfortunately very few of these actions are being taken.

there’s a massive naïveté/immaturity with Greta. I suspect she’s been heavily exploited by the adults around her too. I know she’s an adult too, but developmentally working at a younger age.

"More than often" is not a generalisation, it's a statistic. It's quite possible that she's also passionate about the Gaza cause, but in my opinion it means she's at least clearly evolved from the teen she was. And any doubts about her sincerity (or, more plausibly, her brainwash) aside, I absolutely disagree that the Gaza tragedy has anything to do with climate change except for cherry picking purposes.
Hint: most Gaza pasionarias have nothing to say at all about other wars just as detrimental to the planet.

It is all very well being clear we eg have to reduce emissions. That is very different to saying how we can do that whilst keeping populations fed, sheltered and warm. We have a fairly fanatical minister pushing for co2 reductions in the uk at the moment, but his policies seem to revolve around simply pushing co2 production off shore. Cut north seas oil production but import oil instead, turn farms over to nature or solar power and ship food from South America…

I think this is a big element of it. Greta is a sort of Environmental Nepo baby and that grates on my nerves even if I can't quite explain why

No we also know how to cut emissions. I have no idea about how sound the UK climate change policies are. I don’t live there.

Largely we know the consensus on climate change problems and solutions from
world scientists via the IPCC. We know what the problem is. We know the solution. But we are lacking the will to implement them.

But this means that we don’t know how to solve the issue - to fix something, you need to know what’s going wrong, how to do something about it, and be able to embed those actions in society. We haven’t done this because we don’t know how, and Greta lecturing doesn’t actually help, if it turns people off it makes it worse.

so your point is that as a teenager she focussed on climate change but has now changed (as everyone does), and so you dislike her? Or what?

She was put on a plane home by the Israelis. This was a predictable consequence of her actions.

I also don't know what she thought she was going to achieve that people actually in the region can't. It was a publicity stunt.

There's a lot of money in big oil and she makes an easy target for them. I suspect a lot of behind the scenes media stuff to ensure she's regularly trolled, attacked etc. And yes, misogyny. Sad but true.

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.

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?

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.

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.