She’s not wrong. It’s insane that we’re still burning coal and oil.
There’s also no hope. The small group of owners with power aka capital will continue to run the table for short term profit until they have to retreat to their luxury climate bunkers, then they’ll keep ordering it to be done from those luxury climate bunkers until collapse, and the peasants will be too afraid of losing their subsistence opiates (social media, “reality” tv, fast food, literal opiates, etc) to lift so much as a pitchfork.
Which is why I respect Greta for doing what billions of us ought to be doing. She is a just person in an unjust world doing what’s right in defiance of it. The tragedy is that if the world joined her in rejecting and remaking our consumerist, profiteer controlled, growth/metastasis addicted civilization, there would be hope, which is why the owners and their cheerleader sycophant peasants hate her so. She’s a symbol of what could have been, humanity caring for humanity and our shared fragile habitat as a species, a sentiment the capitalists traded away a long time ago in the name of insatiable greed “rational self-interest.”
“Do not go gentle into that good night… Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” -Dylan Thomas
I think that’s a rather pessimistic view on things. Greta isn’t alone, she’s one of the more prominent figures in a global movement demanding change. A movement which is rapidly gaining momentum and effectiveness. She isn’t a symbol of ‘what might have been’, she’s a symbol of what’s to come. I know that all that’s happening around the world is frustrating and scary, but it’s important to remain optimistic. Pessimism only benefits the status quo.