Five years ago, on this day, August 20, 2018, Greta Thunberg did her first school strike.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 408ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Greta Thunberg was the daughter of a famous Swedish opera singer and her very supportive dad. She had been in severe emotional mental distress because of climate change, not eating/agoraphobic etc. You can read about it in her book and I recommend you do.
It was a simple straightforward protest that has become mythology-sized and some people want to believe that she is the pawn of a globalist movement and everything is mediated and manipulated. And they find “proof” of this, to their own satisfaction. And on and on we go.
What I think we can learn from this is that the media latch on to to young people and ‘odd’ “people as the “stars” of a movement…
Greta is very smart and very very funny.
What happened next
The climate movement went up like a rocket and has come down like a stick because it doesn’t know how to do anything other than marches and rallies and sleepovers.
There’s an impressive amount of Just Stop Oil action, but the broader movement doesn’t have a granular capacity… Oh well, too late now anyway.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
2 replies on “August 20, 2018 – Greta Thunberg’s first protest”
You write: “The climate movement … has come down like a stick because it doesn’t know how to do anything other than marches and rallies”
From what I gleaned from your writings is that you have a broader vision of the “climate movement” beyond just protesting. (maybe similar to Rupert Read?). But as of now, ppl are debating the Barbie movie, not the climate. So, what exactly would change a collective mindset from Barbie to climate for your (and Rupert’s) vision of an informed and engaged society to emerge? In my calculation it would be an outspoken media, government or … sustained large scale protests like the ones in Germany 1989, Egypt 2011 … which then might bring about the wider engagement in society. Otherwise, the speed setter seems to remain COP/FF Industry. The question is how to trigger mainstream like in Germany, Egypt to create a focal point.
Hi Frank,
thanks so much for commenting. Basically “yes” to everything.
The climate “movement” is also surely a movement for democratic renewal (or birth!), for care for other peoples, other species, future generations etc. It is much much broader than the tight focus on molecules of carbon dioxide.
The challenges facing such a movement are formidable, of course – not just the usual suspects (corporate propaganda, state surveillance/interference, bad faith actors) but also the very scale of the challenge being so enormous – people look at it, see how big it is, and – quite understandably – stick their heads in the sand. I prefer Germany 1989 (Leipzig etc) over Egypt and the Arab Spring in 2011 for various reasons. But of course, both failed/were successfully contained and constrained. You may be interested in a series of posts I’ve put up on marchudson.net, after reading a brilliant 1982 memoir of the 1960s called “Dreams Die Hard”. The excerpts all point to various aspects of the challenges facing social movement organisations in their struggle to survive/thrive. I’ve written on that site about these challenges – you might like the one about cher and incentive structures…
best wishes
Marc