Bereft of Real Solutions, Climate Hysteria Becomes a Children's Crusade

Scenes from the Climate Emergency:

One: I was teaching at a prep academy for immigrant kids, whose parents want to ensure they get into good schools. It was the day of the "Global Climate Strike," which, as it occurred on a sunny school day, was surprisingly well-attended. One of my students approached me before class and asked, clearly worried, if the world was going to end in twelve years.

No, I replied, it wasn't going to. I told him that this was an alarmist statement, meant to cajole him into changing his behaviour and that many similar alarmist predictions had been made over the years. I explained to him that it was one thing to work and hope for a better future, quite another to accept that there is no future. I hope I got through.

Two: I was sitting in a lineup to get through Vancouver's hideously outdated George Massey Tunnel, one of only two links between the south shore and the central suburbs. It was due to be replaced, but the socialist, "green" government of the Province canceled this, so now hundreds of cars idle in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I remind myself to get gas in the US. Canadian gas is now far too expensive, it's already steep price rendered unattainable by carbon taxes imposed by both Federal and Provincial governments.

Three: A sixteen-year-old girl who's been skipping school to protest climate change for the last two years has arrived in North America to great fanfare. For some reason, she's addressing the United Nations and meeting Presidents and Prime Ministers. People at the climate strike are seen holding aloft portraits of her, surrounded by halos. I listen to her speak for the first time. It's frankly terrifying. She is a fanatic. But she is being worshipped like a saint. I'm truly wondering what the hell has happened to our society. We appear to be teetering on the edge of Maosim.

Taken together, these little vignettes have led me to a depressing conclusion. Devoid of real ideas to address anthropomorphic climate change, the left has resorted to the two things it does best: lecture shrilly, and tax prodigiously. Pipelines are canceled, but they aren't replaced by battery factories and solar farms. No, they're replaced by Saudi oil. Same planet, so not really a solution. Electric cars remain too expensive for working schmos like me, and bike paths are really only a solution for urban apartment dwellers.

Thanks to chronic housing unaffordability, the middle-classes of our smugly green cities cannot afford to live anywhere near their jobs. Their governments preach alternative transportation, but only have sanctimony to offer, not bus lines. But we are charged taxes for daring to drive to work. That'll teach us. And since we won't replace our aging infrastructure, thanks largely to pressure from the eco-lobby, we sit in our idling cars, wasting expensive gas.

Yet the chattering classes wonder why everyone hasn't bought into modern enviro-panic. They've tried everything. Prime Minsters in canoes, camping subsidies, ratcheting up the rhetoric... we've gone from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" to "CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!!!!"

Into this atmosphere of manufactured hysteria, enter Greta Thunberg. Greta, a sixteen-year-old school skipping Swedish girl with Aspergers' and Mutism, is the daughter of an opera singer and an actress. I'm sure that's a coincidence. She has arrived on the world stage as a climate messiah, despite the fact that she appears to be basically just a re-programmed David Suzuki. There are no new ideas here, just the old ones, with the volume and emotion turned up. Plus, she's a kid, and what's more, a disabled kid, so "how dare you" criticize her.

We're told she's a role model, but pardon me if I demur. As I told my kids on the day of the climate strike, if you want to change the world, you're better off staying in school and learning about the world you want to change. That way, your opinions will be based on knowledge, not popular opinion. As for emulating her lifestyle, we're told she's convinced her parents to give up air travel and meat. Big sacrifices there, but let's remember that Europe is much better equipped with rail services than North America. How is a Western Canadian supposed to get anywhere without an airplane or car? And eating vegetables still requires arable land, fertilizer, pesticides, and other naughty things.

Much fanfare was made of how Greta arrived in North America. She hitched a lift on a millionaire's yacht. I'm sure that'll be a scheduled service soon. She needs wheels to get around though, so Arnold Schwarzenegger has lent her his electric Humvee to cruise from hectoring to hectoring. Again, we've all got rich actor/former Governor of California pals to do that for us.

Long story short: ordinary people who pay bills and have to figure out how to get to work need to be brought on board with ecological initiatives, not alienated from them. Enough goddamn lectures from the jet set, thank you. Give us some alternatives. I'd be happy to take a tram to work, but there isn't one. I'd be happy to recycle everything, but most of my trash gets directed to the landfill. I'd be happy to eat only organic, but that would require a second job.

I don't need a strident kid lecturing me like one of Mao's Red Guards. I need help from the people in power to live my life with less impact on the environment, not more taxes to punish me for using the only alternatives available.

And stop scaring the kids. The world isn't ending in twelve years, and convincing the next generation to give up hope will reap nothing but nihilism. Let them be kids, keep them in school, and let them learn. They can address the UN when they know what they're talking about.