Climate Theology

Back in May I wrote here about the newest celebrity among the climatistas, the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg who was adorning the cover of Time magazine, giving TED talks, appearing at the World Economic Forum, and, soon, speaking at UN climate change summit of some kind. This, after sailing across the Atlantic to get to New York to avoid the carbon footprint of a plane flight, never mind that she made the voyage in a sailboat made largely from oil and constructed in an energy-intensive manufacturing process, and never mind that a crew of four is going to be flown over from Germany to sail the boat back, meaning the total carbon footprint of this stunt is higher than if she had just taken a plane in the first place. But I suppose the climatistas need their heroes, since Al Gore, while certainly a comic figure, is no marvel any more.

I compared Thunberg to Samantha Smith, the 10-year-old schoolgirl from Maine who was exploited by the media and the anti-war left in the 1980s, before being killed in a light plane crash that arose because of her artificial celebrity, and thus I decided to leave Thunberg alone. It is highly likely that in 10 or 20 years the media and the activists will have completely forgotten Thunberg and tossed her aside in favor of the next shiny new thing, and there will be a large hole in her soul when she finds that activist “meaning” is quite meaningless.

But I can’t resist observing the significance of this tweet:

“I have found a meaning.” Never mind the legitimate observation about how climate activism has become a substitute religion; the problem with finding your profound meaning in a particular cause is that it makes you commit to the apocalyptic version of that cause, such that you are unwilling to modify your views in the light of changing facts or circumstances. This is a large part of what makes it nearly impossible to have sensible deliberations about either climate risk or climate policy. The true believers turn everything up to 11, and brook no dissent.

I’d have been more impressed if Thunberg had sailed across the ocean in an all-wooden boat, or a boat made from straw and such, Thor Heyerdahl style. Better still: why can’t these climate summits be done partly by Skype, and thus saving a lot of plane trips and emissions? The simple answer is: our climate heroes are simply too important.

This, it appears, is a real thing:

I think it is possible that the superyacht in the picture is the one Leo DiCaprio rents from an Arab sheikh when he wants to party in the Med. How can we expect to save the planet without Leo and Greta anyway? So shut up about their hypocrisy.

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