Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke at the UN Climate Conference today. Trump skipped the meeting to attend a discussion of religious freedom. Last Friday, Thunberg inspired millions of students around the world to demonstrate on behalf of action to address the climate crisis.
She said today:
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.
Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you.
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you.
For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
You say you ‘hear’ us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.
To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit back on January 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatonnes. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years.
There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this.
Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
And a little child shall lead them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Breathtaking. And dead on.
Look, every year, the UN publishes a report on biodiversity. It’s most recent report tells us that in the past 30 years, the average vertebrate species on planet Earth has declined in absolute numbers by 58 percent. Over the same time period, flying insect populations have declined by 75-80 percent.
Now, imagine that something had killed of 58 percent or 75-80 percent of HUMANS over that time scale. Would there be ANYTHING ELSE we would be thinking about?????
It’s time for us to wake the ____ up.
Thank you, Greta.
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cx: Its most recent report
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You’re more optimistic than I, Bob. I think it might already be over.
Of course, that little blob we live on will still circle the sun, and some life will survive for a while (until the sun goes ‘red giant’), but our species?
Greta makes my heart break.
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People don’t know the most basic facts about what’s going on. They don’t know that we are taking two trillion fish a year out of the ocean (that’s equal to the number of seconds in 63,000 years). They don’t know that almost all land used by humans is for agriculture, and that almost half of that is fed to lifestock. They don’t know that when you eat an animal instead of eating the crops directly, 90 percent of the calories are lost (they went into the animal’s life processes). They worry about human overpopulation (at 7 billion of us) but don’t think twice about lifestock overpopulation (some 65 billion farmed animals worldwide). They don’t know about the dramatic eutrophication of our waterways and the great die-offs due to that, resulting mostly from runoff of nitrogen-carrying fertilizers. They don’t know that insects are disappearing because of neonicitotinoid poisoning. They don’t know that half of the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years. We are operating with almost complete ignorance and obliviousness and heedlessness. It’s looking really, really bad.
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Breathtaking is right.
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She speaks truth to power. Short and directly to the point.
A quote from Bush Jr regarding his legacy (considering his actions involving Iraq ):
“History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made for Iraq and I’m just not going to be around to see the final verdict,” the two-term president told CNN in a wide-ranging interview.
“In other words, I’ll be dead.”
This is part of the mindset of those who we need to persuade. Made their decisions and won’t be around to see or feel the repercussions.
What’s sad is that Bush Jr is looked on as “mild” in comparison to our leaders, today.
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I lived overseas when George W was in power. I purchased a desk calendar that had quotes. I’d read one every day and think about how stupid W was.
Now, we have Trump. W is beginning to look smarter everyday by comparison. Trump should be awarded the Piece [Peace] of SH*T award and not the Nobel Peace Prize.
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I hope world leaders will not ignore her pleas for change as we are on a collision course with disaster. She speaks a truth many profiteers would rather ignore. This is a time for bold action, not wimpy lip service. Greta is a passionate messenger, and we would wise to heed her warnings.
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Read the comments from people who heard Greta Thunberg. One said she needed a snickers bar and one called her a poor brain-washed girl.
My brother says that God controls the weather. I guess since it is nearing the end of times, God is spewing this at us for all of our sins. Good grief. No wonder Trump can say it is a Chinese hoax and people believe him.
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Carol,
The same people who belittle the climate crisis say that it was God who wrote the Second Amendment. He apparently wants everyone to have an AR-15 or AK-47.
Can anyone cite a Biblical verse that asserts the God-given right to have guns (Sarah Sanders)?
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If God had given Adam a gun, he prolly would either have shot himself or shot Eve.
And, as they say that would be all She wrote.
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shot Eve: while we never speak of it, and the statistics are carefully NOT COLLECTED, women are dying every single day at the hands of husbands and boyfriends
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The God given right to bear arms
If Adam had a gun
He wouldna had a son
Cuz Adam woulda shot
The only wife he’d got
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By the way, here’s the Biblical verse you asked for
On the Seventh Day, God created the AR15 assault rifle.
And God blessed the AR15 and sanctified it, because it gave God great joy to behold — and also hold, and fire at all the little animals that God had created earlier in the week” (Genesis 2:1-3).
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SomeDAM Poet: I laughed uproariously at this newest quote from the bible. You are a genius for having found it.
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You just have to look in the right translation of the Bible: the John Rambo version
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SomeDAM Poet: Isn’t it wonderful to have a president who stands up for religious freedom. I wonder if he’s studied the John Rambo version of the New Testament. He probably has a ‘gut feeling’ for this newest version of the bible since AR15 assault rifles are created by God, or maybe by his angels.
………………………….
Posting from the WH:
President Trump: Our founders understood the right to religious freedom
“America stands with believers in every country who ask only for the freedom to live according to the faith that is within their own hearts.”
Religious freedom is in a state of global crisis. Right now, a stunning 83 percent of the world’s population lives in nations where religious freedom is threatened or banned. The resulting violence has been on the rise for the past decade, affecting many faiths.
That’s why President Trump is putting the issue center stage this week at the United Nations, an organization with the power to do more to hold bad actors accountable. The right to follow religious convictions is built into the very fabric of America, but that right shouldn’t be exclusive to us. Citizens of every nation should be allowed to worship freely.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-trump-committed-protecting-religious-freedom-united-states-around-world/?utm_source=link
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John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten gun.
It’s amazing how long that passage has been mistranslated.
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dienne77: It is truly amazing how religious we are getting. Laughed like crazy.
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Also, it’s a very little known fact that there is more to 1 Corinthians 4-7: “4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 7.5 And if the bastards are still getting to you, love picks up the nearest semi-automatic weapon and blows the hell out of everyone.”
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dienne77: I am so grateful for the update. I don’t study the bible and it helps to have people like you instruct me. [I also almost died laughing.]
Matthew 26:52-53
52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. 53 But, when confronted by an education reformer, pull out your assault weapon.
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And there is also this
“Blessed are the Peacemakers” (aka, Colt revolvers)
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Thank you for finding the Biblical source of the Second Amendment
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And another one from Jesus
“Love your AR as yourself”
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Then there is the actual verse from Mathew in what is called the “little-Apocalypse.” To wit
“I have piped unto you an he have not danced.”
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Roy
As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.
I wonder if that’s the source of the lyrics for the Elton John song “Ticking”
They pleaded for your sanity for the sake of those inside
Throw out your gun, walk out slow, just keep your hands held high
But they pumped you full of rifle shells as you stepped out the door
And you danced in death like a marionette on the vengeance of the law
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The same surly deniers ridiculed the Stoneman Douglas students that took a stand against gun violence. They refuse to face our problems.
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reminds me of those endless arguments that owning guns is a “god-given” right
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“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
This girl is smarter than nearly every economist on the planet.
That IS indeed all the vast majority of them ever talk about.
Greta understands that some things you just can’t put a dollar value on and that eternal growth in a finite system is not just dumb, but physically impossible.
I’m really glad she is not playing the hopey changey word game.
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the hopey changey word game
You have perfect pitch, SomeDAM.
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The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win
By Al Gore September 20, 2019
We have the tools. Now we are building the political power.
…More destructive Category 5 hurricanes are developing, monster fires ignite and burn on every continent but Antarctica, ice is melting in large amounts there and in Greenland, and accelerating sea-level rise now threatens low-lying cities and island nations.
Tropical diseases are spreading to higher latitudes. Cities face drinking-water shortages. The ocean is becoming warmer and more acidic, destroying coral reefs and endangering fish populations that provide vital protein consumed by about a billion people.
Worsening droughts and biblical deluges are reducing food production and displacing millions of people. Record-high temperatures threaten to render areas of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, North Africa and South Asia uninhabitable. Growing migrations of climate refugees are destabilizing nations. A sixth great extinction could extinguish half the species on earth.
Finally people are recognizing that the climate is changing, and theconsequences are worsening much faster than most thought was possible. A record 72 percent of Americans polled say that the weather is growing more extreme. And yet every day we still emit more than 140 million tons of global warming pollution worldwide into the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
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Wonderful child, Greta Thunberg. Fighting words!
I suppose the growing hordes of Evangelists/ charismatics/ pentacostals see this simply as Götterdämmerung. They’re more interested in the next world than this one– choose to ignore all the Biblical verse preaching care of the Earth and one’s suffering neighbor.
I have often viewed the Genesis command to “go forth and multiply” not as sin-making of birth control and abortion, but as a prophecy and plan: humankind cannot help but multiply to a point which challenges the Earth’s resources. As that point approaches, humans must search the scripture for other lessons– must teach each other and learn together how to preserve their world.
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She is an impressive speaker. There was a frightening tone in her voice that will resonate in her generation and mine. Some will hear her and justify radical action. Will this be the real birth of a new left in world politics. The distant right dominated the late twentieth century and the early part of this century. They yell about the left, which does not exist. Soon a real left will emerge. Will this be it?
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It’s interesting that Fox News, not-so-Breitbart, and other right-wing media run story after story about “Antifa,” an organization that barely exists. For example, at ONE of the world’s thousands of Climate Strike events, there were two young teenagers dressed in black who talked back to some policemen. This was recorded on camera, and it became THE STORY OF THE DAY on Fox. They have taken a tiny, tiny group of people with no organization and turned it into a vast conspiracy. LMAO. Antifa hardly exists except in the fevered imaginations of Faux News crazies.
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I don’t see Greta as “left” but as an honest realist — an ecologist.
She has an ecological perspective while both left and right are driven by ideology.
We need to get beyond the ideology if we are going to survive. Ideology is a way of fooling yourself but as Richard Feynman noted, Nature can not be fooled.
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Nor do I see her as a political left. There are, however, issues that create political blocs that re-define traditional places where issues go to dwell. This one is complex. Trump was able to garner some support from labor for his anti-immigrant retoric, pulling away some of the traditional left for his extreme right. What Greta brings to the table is a new and urgent voice for an issue that is vital in a very literal way. Her voice rings Jeremianic, warning us to take the long view. It is stuff like this that will re-define the political spectrum for a new generation. Any such re-definition in history has produced turbulence. Buckle up.
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I fear that she is already being labeled a “leftist” in an effort by some to dismiss her and an effort by others to coopt and perhaps water down her message.
I can see that she would have little patience for either group
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‘We are failing’: Greta Thunberg is right, world leaders say of lack in climate change fight…Straights Times of Singapore
…”I want to echo the sentiments and the emotion of Greta – that she could come here and condemn us all,” said Mr Allen Michael Chastanet, Prime Minister of the Caribbean island nation of St Lucia. “And deservedly so.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on world leaders at Monday’s Climate Action Summit – held in tandem with a two-week general assembly – to make more aggressive pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and keep the world from warming to catastrophic temperatures…
‘In all, billions of dollars were pledged by governments and businesses to combat global warming, but few made commitments that went significantly beyond what they were already doing.
And the leaders of the world’s two biggest polluters – the US and China – were noticeably absent from the speakers’ list.”
Not one single nation is getting the job done,” former US secretary of state John Kerry said during an opening ceremony of Climate Week.”It’s no wonder our kids are in the streets, screaming at us.”
A SENSE OF OPTIMISM
Mr Guterres worked in the days leading up to the summit to instill a sense of urgency among heads of state.He warned that the world faces “at least 3 deg C of global heating by the end of the century”.And while he won’t be there to see it, he said: “My granddaughters will. And your grandchildren, too. I refuse to be an accomplice in the destruction of their home and only home.”Despite the dire warning, several world leaders stressed that it’s not too late….
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/greta-thunberg-is-right-world-leaders-say-we-are-failing?&utm_source=google_gmail&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany
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Make America Greta Again
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Again?
When was America ever Greta?
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When we were happy to be let alone —
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Make America even betta
Make America greata than Greta
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Gretaful dead, maybe.
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Thank you, Greta! 👍🏽
Another thing that needs to be addressed is POPULATION. But how?
Some brave person with a stage and who is brave needs to also say “Population Growth is killing OUR PLANET.” Just don’t do “reproduction” like China, where they give away “female” babies or keep them a secret from the government and thus these girls have NO RIGHTS whatsoever. SAD.
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It is important that this movement not be reduced to a single individual as icon. It needs to be a movement of the people and rightfully should center Indigenous resistance which has been ongoing for centuries. It should be remembered that the water protector movement at Standing Rock was youth led, and they were largely ignored and criminalized.
As we consider “sustainability” we need to understand that as with so many things, language has been or is in the process of being hijacked by the ruling class to continue to extract profit and accrue power even as our planet faces catastrophe.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a vehicle for the financialization not only of nature, but of all living things. Twelve of the goals are about human capital management. Number 4 and number 8 are about education and training. Wharton is working with the UN on systems of “innovative” finance which centers ed-tech and AI and data analytics. None of these things are good for people or planet as they rely on rare minerals mined by child slaves, 5g EMF radiation, copious amounts of energy and water and generate tremendous e-waste. We need to understand this as certain people are lifted up. If the message is centered on one person it will make them incredibly vulnerable.
Is that something we should allow the media to do to a child? I worry. As a parent, I worry.
Please understand that the UN SDGs have grave consequences for education and the students and workders who will be harnessed to devices for the benefit of impact investors. All in the name of “sustainability.” Educate yourself and others, before it is too late. https://wrenchinthegears.com/2019/09/22/sustainability-for-financiers-what-climate-marchers-need-to-know-about-the-un-sustainable-development-goals/
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Our great president even has to make fun of Greta Thunberg on Twitter. I do wish someone had the power to take away his Twitter account. What a disgusting man who delights in teasing a 16 year old girl.
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President Donald Trump mocked Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter late Monday night after the 16-year-old excoriated world leaders for not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis.
“She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” Trump posted on Twitter, replying to a video of Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations climate action summit earlier in the day.
Trump’s penchant for Twitter insults and online confrontations with people he sees as political adversaries is well known, though Monday’s tweet is a striking display of the President teasing a child.
Thunberg appeared to take Trump’s slight in stride. By late Tuesday morning, she had updated her Twitter bio to read: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”
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