Climate Change Protests - will they make a difference?

out of date pathetic views

So you agree with a vulnerable child being paraded as the poster girl for climate change? A child who seemingly has Aspergers!

I think it’s almost akin to grooming actually.

Very distasteful and exploitative.

I think your eagerness to defend the actions of these protesters has clouded your judgment.

Well you know I don’t think the protest will change anything GG.

I think it will become yesterday’s news and nothing will change.

Time will tell.

When it comes to doing something about it I think my ideas are more radical than most!

I meant to say what I said mycat.

She does go to school and has obviously had a good education if the standard of her English is anything to go by. Her parents are very supportive. Maybe you’d be ok with her watching the Kardashians all day like other 16 year olds.

When people on here say you "are worried abou her", I don't believe you. You are trying to justify your out-of-date pathetic views.

Monica you say you have not heard her in action. Shame on you. There are links on the threads.

Mmmm - so this 16 year old is too young to understand and is being exploited by others in her life whereas recently a 15 year old schoolgirl was held by many on GN to be completely responsible for all her actions and knew exactly what she was doing? Mmmm mmmm

Gonegirl

I think you meant to say you disagree with me. I think you are wrong but you are fully entitled to your opinion as are everyone else on this thread.

I don’t think children should be taken advantage of whatever the cause. It’s disturbing and again I say she should be in school getting an education.

mycat you are simply wrong.

Bellsnonna

Well if that is indeed the case then her parents are massively letting her down instead of turning her into a public spectacle she should be in school.

In my view lording and fawning around any child is crazy behaviour. Seeing the adult MPs hanging on her every word was Frankly embarrassing.

She is obviously being taken advantage of and it should stop.

Eglantine she has got governments listening. Now Extinction Rebellion want to hold talks with ours to get them moving. So far progress has been very slow. (Unenthusiastic?)

I loved her cheeky sense of humour when she was addressing the MPs. "Is my English ok? Can you hear me. Because sometimes I wonder". I don't think she was referring to that speech alone.

You accidentally got the wrong word there Monica. You said "adulation*. Sure you meant admiration.

If she is autistic. I wonder, among all the adulation, who is looking after her mental health.

There is another thread discussing this, or at least there was yesterday.

Please don’t jump on me Alexa because this is a genuine question.

When you say “She has done more to sort the extinction crisis than most other people” what exactly in practical terms has changed?

I get that she has played her part in raising awareness but is there anything that is substantially different because of that? Has any government or big commercial/industrial organisation committed to or even carried out any effective change?

mycatisahacker the “sulky looking kid” has Asperger so maybe that’s why she doesn’t smile a lot?

I do not agree

MOnica, she actually is an important person who merits adult guardians. She has done more to sort the extinction crisis than most other people.

The respect she is given is more than a personality cult ;it's recognition of her truth and hard work,

I have yet to see her in action, on tv or reality, but I too am very uneasy the way an ignorant young woman (what does she really know about the complexities of the problem, exactly what each country is or is not doing or have any comprehension of the technology) to really drive an informed and more realistic campaign, on what is without a shred of doubt a potential catatstrophe situation that needs to be treated with much much more urgency.

Reading and hearing about how she is surrounded by adulating adults and treated like a little goddess, really worries me. These campaigns driven by emotion rather than rationality are often counter productive and hinder achieving the goals they wish to achieve.

This won’t be popular but I find that sulky looking kid very annoying. I don’t particularly like teenagers who seem to think they are more informed and more important than they are.

She needs to go back to school.

You can't lecture other countries if you're not prepared to make some hard choices yourself. And if every country waits for other countries to behave responsibly then we are heading for ecological disaster.

In the Science Museum in London there is a model of the earth which shows, with the aid of areas lighting up, where most of the energy is being used in the world. From my recollection, Europe, North and South America, Australia and the UAE are examples of high users of resources whereas, for instance, Africa uses a much smaller amount of the world's resources. No doubt India and China are moving up the table but they are recent arrivals and it was the developed nations, and Britain in particular with the advent of industrialisation, that set the standard.

Crystaltipps I do not disagree about the futility of sending hordes of people flying around the world to demonstrate elsewhere. I was really trying to point out that, much as our government could probably do more, it is at least trying. The aim is to save the world but, that will not happen while other countries are doing nothing to help. Effort should be directed towards the leaders of countries such as China and India to reduce their contribution to global warming. Even more effort should be directed towards a certain country whose president does not believe in global warming and has said he will do nothing to reduce his country’s pollution.
Incidentally, several people in the protest group admitted that they had flown across the Atlantic to jon in the protests.

crystaltipps it is not the economy, it is the technology and the time span.

If they had just been demnstrating to get more being done more quickly, to rouse public debate to show that the country, as a whole is way in front of the politicians and considers Global warming even more important than Brexit(!) they could have many many more supporters including me. But when they start making impossible demands a lot of people I know, of all ages, just walked away, including those working to provide the technplogy needed and who could best inform such a movement of what can and cannot be done so that they would know what could be done immediately and wha would take longer.

There surely must be huge opportunities for an economy involving less production of unecessary throw-away products and more production of "green technology" - renewable energy and energy saving products. In this country we could start by a real push to upgrading the existing housing stock. The Building Regulations have been continuously upgraded but apply only to new-build and extensions.

Capitalism and it’s need for us to chuck stuff away and buy new constantly and emphasis on constant growth is what is meant here - and I agree with that, our economy is based on people continuing to buy more and more stuff they don’t need - that has to change.

Daze Aghaji is a member of XR and was speaking on behalf of them.