The Convenient Lies of Climate Denial and #Fridays4Future Movement

By
Dhanada Kanta Mishra

The name is Greta Thunberg and she is just about 16 years of age! Only recently she was
nominated by some members of parliament from Sweden for the Nobel peace prize for her
astonishing leadership to a global movement demanding urgent action to stop climate change.
Greta was born in the capital city of Sweden – Stockholm in the year 2003. Her mother is an
opera singer and father is an actor and author. It was only about eight months ago, on August 20th
to be precise, Greta decided to take her bicycle, a hand painted wooden sign-board and a few
pamphlets and stand in front of the Swedish Parliament urging the government to take urgent
action to stop climate change. She stood there almost all day, all alone with very few paying any
attention. Today as she returns every Friday to the same spot to continue her protest, millions
join all over the world in support giving rise to a massive people’s movement – ‘Fridays For
Future’. It is no less than a miracle for an ordinary teenage girl declared autistic by doctors and
diagnosed four years ago with Asperger’s syndrome, following a long bout of depression.

At the tender age of eight, she first watched a few videos related to environmental crisis on
topics such as polar ice cap melting, oceans getting swamped with plastic, deforestation etc. at
her school. She was deeply affected and cried through most of these screenings. While other
children would also be affected, but most moved on afterwards to other more mundane issues,
but Greta couldn’t. She was taken over by depression, greatly contributed by the manifest apathy
all around her – especially of people in position of power to address the crisis. Eventually she
decided to talk to her parents about her thoughts and determination to do something about it.
While initially her parents were concerned, but they supported her unconditionally. Inspired by
the actions of American students against the powerful gun lobby following the Parkland high
school shooting, Greta and her friends wanted to take similar action, but were not sure how to go
about it. Finally, Greta decided to act on her own and the rest as they say is history!

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Greta has emerged in the increasingly desperate scene of climate change activism as a God send
and it couldn’t have come any sooner. Just as Donald Trump won a contentious election in 2016
unexpectedly and started implementing the agenda of climate deniers including withdrawal from
the Paris treaty, the prospects couldn’t have been any bleaker. Only last year the UN’s inter-
governmental panel on climate (IPCC) came out with its report warning of dire consequences of
current trends. The report also recommended what would be required to keep the average global
temperature increase below 1.5 deg centigrade above pre-industrial levels. In his Grammy award
winning documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ former US vice-president and Nobel laureate Mr
Al Gore describes how humanity is like a frog sitting in water which is being warmed slowly. It
doesn’t realise the danger as the water reaches boiling point and kills it. On the other hand, it
would have jumped out instantly if placed in a pot of boiling water! The exponentially increasing
levels of carbon dioxide (which has now exceeded a historic high of over 400 ppm) correlates
strongly with the average global temperature in the atmosphere (now above 1 deg centigrade
above pre-industrial levels). The trend is only clearly visible when looked over a reasonably long
time scale of years not months or weeks which makes us apathetic. The last time, which is over 2
million years ago, the CO2 levels were this high, there was a forest growing in antartica and sea
levels were several feet higher than today.

The global green movement tracing its history back to the nineteen seventies was showing some
signs of fatigue in the face of sustained attack from the fossil fuel lobby with corporate giants
backing them with huge funding. History will record with astonishment the ‘Convenient Lie’
successfully perpetrated on an issue where more than 99% of the scientists have reached
consensus that not only the atmosphere is warming leading to changes in climate, but it is
directly driven by anthropogenic causes such as burning of fossil fuels, industrial activities,
transport, commercial mass agriculture, deforestation among others. This convenient lie takes the
form of doubts that have been deliberately planted in the minds of general public through
massive propaganda. Just like the tobacco lobby’s denial of smoking as a cause of cancer, the
climate denial is growing more and more powerful thanks to the spread of social media and fake

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news. The United States continues to be both the leader in climate science and activism while at
the same time being the home of the most powerful climate denial lobby that takes many forms –
from political alliances, ideological platforms, think tanks to intellectual forums – all driven by
massively powerful PR firms. As a result, in spite of the well-known catastrophic consequences
of climate change, very little by way of mitigation seems to be catching the necessary
momentum to halt the juggernaut of assured destruction.

In this critical juncture arrives Greta Thunberg, who has caught the imagination of young people
everywhere. Even progressive politicians who are keen to support strong action against climate
change in form of carbon tax, incentives for renewables and other regulations that may restrict
the profligate life-styles need strong public support. That can only come from a mass movement
like the #Fridays4Future. Without such a public outcry, no amount of bureaucratic initiatives
such as the Paris protocol can yield the desired results. In her public interactions, Greta often
imagines the life on earth after a few decades. By that time, many of the current older generation
may have passed on without experiencing the worst of the impact of climate change, but Greta’s
generation will be at the peak of their life having to suffer the worst. When politicians question
the students boycotting school on Fridays to support the ‘Friday4Future’ movement, Greta
responds by pointing out the uselessness of school, as what is taught at school is not
implemented by politicians to save the future of the humanity. The tragedy of the climate crisis is
that the problem is known, the solutions are proven, yet humanity is unable to take strong action
in the face of the entrenched greed of the vested interest – the fossil feul industry. Some compare
it to the ‘Titanic’ rushing towards its grave, but I liken it to the recent craches of the Boeng’s 737
Max which was the result of corporate greed that placed profit over safety.

History is replete with examples of young enlightened souls showing the path to the grown-ups.
Like our very own Baji Rout or Dharmapada or Joshua Wong who led the umbrella movement in
Hong Kong, Greta is showing a mirror to the society which is preaching sustainability but
practicing in the most unsustainable lifestyle. The British romantic poet Williams Wordsworth

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famously said - ‘The Child is father of the Man’. I hope Greta and her supporters will prove him
right by leading mankind out of the current existential crisis in to a world that would live up to
Gandhi’s mxim – ‘Nature has enough for everyone’s need but not man’s greed’.

The author is a civil engineering professor and Principal of KMBB College of Engineering and Technology
under BPUT currently visiting Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as a Research Scholar. He
can be reached by email at dhanadam@gmail.com