Listen to her speak truth to the world direct.
I’m going to the strike. I’m taking my kids out of primary school. I don’t care if they get it yet or not. They need to know that i care and that they are going to. Why? Because climate scientists have been pointing this out for over 25 years, since they said (at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) that overwhelming indications pointed towards massive damage being done to the earth’s biosphere by modern industrial society. Since then, unfortunately, it’s been mostly business as usual: mass media has supported politics aligned with global corporations, to continue supporting the damage done, in the name of profit. It’s frustrating to know this and to watch people – even intelligent, open-minded adults – clutch at straws and try to believe that we can continue to destroy the earth and not pay the ultimate price.
Sometimes, it takes an innocent or an outsider to destroy our illusions and smash the bubble of lies we have woven for ourselves. The Emperor has no clothes! Now, again, a child has come to wake us up. This is kinda embarrassing. How is it that a strike has to be called by children, who want to leave school to try and make political leaders realise that they have to act now if we are to save the environment from irreversible damage? It’s not like we have lacked credible science or anything … no less than the IPCC – that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, and a source of scientific information and technical guidance for Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – has been trying to wake us up for years.
But we all love a good story, especially when it means we can enjoy creature comforts and believe we are chosen to live in the lap of luxury, not merely by the good fortune of technological development and historical serendipity, but because … we are special. That is the power of myth. A powerful myth convinces you that you can have it all; you can enjoy life here and now and in the body, as well as knowing that you are destined by the forces of the universe to carry on in splendour and majesty beyond this mortal coil. Doesn’t that sound great?! Yeah!
And to think, without destroying our planetary home, we could have all of this, with a sophisticated understanding of how myth works within and without. In the world and in our hearts and body/minds, we are star dust, evolving to be at one with eternal consciousness, unlimited … unless we choose not to. And then we become forgetful, worldlings, limited, socialised, attached, adult. And then, we need the children, the fools, the artists, the whimsical, the poets, to remind us. That we are more. As Marianne Williamson put it, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
So don’t just let the kids lead the way! Strike! Join them (and us). Why can’t we organise and resist the devastation of the world as adults? Because we are so caught up in the myth of technological progress and plenty that we are drunk on it. We can’t always see the truth so obviously dangling before our eyes. But Greta can. The kids can. And we can wake up to it too. It’s about time. Let’s speak out and make our kids proud. They’ll remember this, when the damage really starts to hit in the near future. They’ll know that we cared enough to strike out, against the mainstream, for change. And that we never gave up.
https://www.schoolstrike4climate.com/
And lastly, this just in, from the always devastatingly funny First Dog on the Moon: