Last December this blog featured Greta Thunberg, a relatively unknown straight-talking Swedish teenager with a clear message on climate change. Ten months later she is a straight talking Swedish teenager with a clear views on climate change and a global sensation. She unleashed this speech at the UN Summit on Climate Action last week. Please listen to her. USA’s populist president Donald Trump and Narendra Modi India’s presidential-style prime minister, busy with economic deals in their Howdy-Modi tour of rightwing USA chose not to attend, though Trump did take time out from his busy schedule to post on Twitter mocking her emotionally charged speech . Ignore him, listen to Greta.
Shouting from the sidelines.
I feature Greta Thunberg now as the figurehead of a nascent new human decision making system, a catalytic convertor for a global movement of climate strikes organised by 350.org. People for whom changing the trajectory of the planet is more important than contributing another life day to the neo-liberal juggernaut to which we are strapped are now suddenly connected. Shouting together. This blog frequently excoriates Nationalism (eg. my last post) and right wing Neo-liberal, outmoded economics. Here is an alternative. A young woman leading a global movement that connects horizontally across the fences of national borders and economics that divide us. People in Melbourne, Frankfurt, London and Dehradun down the road from my Himalayan eerie are taking action irrespective of their nationality. This is all outside the traditional national democratic decision making structures that have served us so badly up to now. This is young people trying to lead us to decisions based on the future, not old people taking us down cul-de-sacs of the past. A young woman with asbergers is a totally different figurehead to an old white billionaire. A digitally connected global movement of the (millions of) people most connected and knowledgeable on a single issue is so different to a disconnected national population navigating the space of myriad interacting issues as they walk or take autos to polling booths and leave with inked thumbs. No more one-man-one-vote (on pre-defined policies) maybe were are moving to one-engaged activist-plenty-of-surprising-change. On this issue those who care most and know most have most say. Global citizens defining well-being as tied up with planetary health and acting on it is not people meekly accepting figures on GDP. It a new model. Could we be seeing the growing embryo of new human decision making? I hope so.
The future
Shouting on the sidelines of the future
So that’s It. Listen to Greta Turnbeg, consider if this is the start of a new way to thik and make decisions, and act. Join the climate strike nearest you.
I’d love your comments. Is this just a flash in the pan soon to be superseded by the next Olympic Games, economic downturn Apple -I-phone or celebrity divorce or is it bigger? Are we really seeing the start of global connections and decisions made outside narrow country based political systems? Fully formed how should our global decision making system look? Are Trump and Modi on the sidelines because in 21st century global decisions that is where Nationalistic, presidential, populist, personality-cult old men belong? Tell me.
The centre of the future?