November 7, 2021
Footage
shows the 18-year-old at Festival Park in Govan chanting:
"You
can shove your climate crisis up your ae,
you can shove your climate crisis up your ae!"
The young activist has quickly acquainted herself with the Glaswegian sense of humour as she joins one of the many protests calling out political inaction during the COP26 climate summit in the city. As you can probably tell, Thunberg isn't exactly convinced that politicians are doing enough to protect the planet.
Addressing
the crowds gathered across the River Clyde from the COP26 venue, she
declared:
"Change
is not going to come from inside there — that is not leadership.
This is leadership. We say no more blah blah blah, no more
exploitation of people and nature and the planet.
No more
exploitation. No more blah blah blah. No more whatever the fk
they are doing inside there."**
In September, Thunberg mocked Boris Johnson by quoting parts of his speeches on climate change and adding, “blah, blah, blah.”
The
Prime Minister himself referenced her remarks during his speech at
the COP26 opening session earlier that day (Monday, November 1). He
said:
"I
was there in Paris six years ago when we agreed to net zero and to
try to restrain the rise in the temperature of the planet to 1.5°C.
And all those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah — to coin
a phrase — and the anger and impatience of the world will be
uncontainable unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment when we
get real about climate change."
Thunberg arrived in Glasgow the previous day (Sunday, October 31) by train and is expected to take part in two large protests through the city later in the week.
Speaking at Festival Park, she added: "This COP26 is so far just like the previous COPs — and they have led us nowhere.Inside COP, they are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously. Pretending to take the present seriously — the present of people already being affected today by the climate crisis."
The above comes from LAD Bible, a British news source I trust.
As much as I admire Greta Thunberg and her fiery, angry spirit — and I do believe that she and every following generation has a right to be angry — I also consider her to be something of a twit. She seems to be very strong in judgment, and very weak in offering solutions. Sure, she is still young, and like most young people, she’s highly reactive.
Speaking as a concerned Canadian citizen, I am appalled at my government’s track record on climate change. I, too, am deeply concerned that we are approaching the point of no return at break-neck speed — and may have already passed it. Back in the late 1990s, I was trucking through South Dakota and had stopped on an exit ramp to relieve myself. Another truck pulled up behind me to do the same. The other driver and I chatted briefly about the thick layer of bugs on our windshields — it was awful, bugs on top of bugs. He commented that he’d never seen them so bad, and neither had I. At that time, I was starting to become aware of climate change, and beginning to wonder about the phenomenon of the sixth extinction, though I hadn’t yet connected the two.
Now, some 25 years later, I can't help but notice the die-back of insect life I warned that driver about. In Canada, during the summer months from about 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., driving becomes extremely annoying due to the swarms of bugs coating your windshield. But over the last decade, there’s been a notable drop in insect populations. What disturbs me most is the impact on pollinators — particularly bees.
The group of chemicals known as neonicotinoids is devastating to bees, as are many herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. The obvious solution is to stop using them. However, simply halting their use won’t fix the problem. There is hope, though. In Britain, researchers at the University of York have developed a variety of switch-grass that can detoxify residues of the military explosive RDX.
This innovation has the potential to be further engineered to neutralize other toxic substances.
Recently, the UN published a report stating that planting trees will not save us. This hit me like a gut punch. The problem is twofold:
Newly planted forests cannot absorb the excess CO₂ already in the atmosphere, and
The trees themselves are dying due to climate change.Normally, winter freezes protect trees from rot. But as winters warm, trees are no longer freezing properly and are starting to rot from the inside out during the coldest months.
Although forests are not the "lungs of the planet" as once believed, our oceans are — and they, too, are in serious decline. The overall picture is grim, as Miss Thunberg rightly points out, yet there is still more reason for hope than despair.
We know the planet’s two ice caps are vital to regulating global temperature because they serve two functions:
They reflect sunlight and heat back into space, and
Sea ice expels salt when it freezes, which creates a churning motion that helps circulate ocean currents and redistribute heat from the equator.
These ocean currents are slowing. Whether the consequences resemble those in the film, The Day After Tomorrow or unfold more gradually remains to be seen. CO² capture and sequestration — combined with some planetary engineering — may buy us enough time to redesign our economies. All three strategies are achievable with today’s technology.
In April 2021, a researcher at Purdue University developed the whitest shade of white ever created — it reflects 95.5% of all light. Originally designed as a passive cooling material, what if we repurposed it to simulate artificial ice caps? What if every balcony, rooftop, and car roof in every city, town, and village worldwide were painted with it? What if tens of thousands of square kilometers of breathable canvas, coated in this paint were laid across the Arctic tundra? Instant ice caps.
Unsurprisingly, the oil industry has tainted the idea of carbon capture. They’re using the technology to trap their emissions and store carbon underground — often in the very wells they’ve been drilling, many of which are neither sealed, nor maintained properly. This approach feels cynical and flawed. On a more hopeful note, a Swedish company, Climeworks AG, operating in Iceland, has developed a method to extract CO² directly from the air, and store it in the island’s porous volcanic basalt. This type of rock is ideal for permanent storage. Though they currently manage only 4,000 tons annually, they are scaling up rapidly.
In my view, Greta Thunberg and today's youth have every right to be angry. But rather than mourning what may have been taken from them, they should fight like hell for what remains. They must channel their passion into advocating for the technologies and solutions that can turn hope into reality.






















