I have been waiting for this one, and have said that Greta Thunberg would ultimately go the full commo, and she has. Greta, “how dare you,” the pint-size climate change fanatic has criticised the COP27 conference on climate change, and in launching her new book, has proclaimed that capitalism itself, an oppressive racist system, must go. Never mind that capitalism has allowed the Third World populations to reach their present, levels, and without it, will surely plunge into depopulation. But, thinking things through this deeply is not what the media-conscious Left like to do. It is all about seizing the moment, not the day, carpe diem.

https://www.amren.com/news/2022/11/greta-thunberg-its-time-to-transform-the-wests-oppressive-and-racist-capitalist-system/

“From a climate change campaigner to presenting a new far-Left political agenda against “racist” capitalism – meet the new Greta Thunberg.

The 19-year-old Swedish activist has announced that as well as tackling her usual area of climate action and awareness-spreading, she has now thrown her weight behind defeating the West’s “oppressive” capitalist system.

Calling for a “system-wide transformation” at her book launch in London, she claimed that the world’s current “normal” – dictated by the people in power – has caused the climate breakdown.

She said: “We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet.

“It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”

Ms Thunberg added: “If economic growth is our only priority, then what we are experiencing now should be exactly what we should be expecting.”

Appearing at London’s Royal Festival Hall to launch her new book, The Climate Book, on Sunday night, she decided to venture into political waters in her speech – having previously avoided doing so.

Released last week, the book includes around 100 contributions from various climate experts, including writer Naomi Klein, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief of the World Health Organization, and Thomas Piketty, the economist.

Expressing views that seemed more radical than in the past, she added that the climate crisis “has its roots in racist, oppressive extractivism that is exploiting both people and the planet to maximise short-term profits for a few”.

People were quick to point out the political emphasis on social media, with one best-selling author saying “this is proof that Greta hates capitalism for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with climate change”.

Michael Shellenberger, an American author, posted on Twitter that the “whole capitalist system” Ms Thunberg referred to has led to larger food surpluses than at any point in history, average human life expectancy to rise from 30 to 70 and a drop in total deaths from natural disasters.

Ms Thunberg told Samira Ahmed, the BBC journalist, during a question and answer part of the evening that “fascist movements offering easy, false solutions and scapegoats to complex problems are growing and becoming more normalised”.

When asked by Ms Ahmed whether she thought it was as simple as making laws that outlaw things, she responded: “There are many [things we can do], but while we do these things that we can do within our current system, we have to realise that we need a system-wide transformation.

“We need to change everything because right now our current system is on a collision course with the future of humanity and the future of our civilization”.

Ms Thunberg also described the upcoming Cop27 as a forum for “greenwashing” and said she would not be attending.

The teenager, who is widely hailed as the world’s spokesman for climate change, shot to worldwide fame after attending her first United Nations climate conference in 2018, when the then 15-year-old said: “I expected it to be more action and less talking.”

During the question and answer session on Sunday, she said: “I’m not going to Cop27 for many reasons, but the space for civil society this year is extremely limited.”

This year’s conference, taking place from Nov 6 to 18 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, will see world leaders – including Rishi Sunak – gather to discuss the pressing climate crisis.

“Of course, it’s very symbolic that it’s held in a tourist centre – a tourist paradise – in a country that violates most of the basic human rights – and many world leaders are too busy to go there,” she added.

Addressing the coverage of her political take in the new book on Wednesday morning, she posted on Twitter:

Ms Thunberg attached an image of an excerpt from the book alongside the post, which she said was her take on “systems and ideologies”.”

https://unherd.com/thepost/greta-thunberg-throws-her-lot-in-with-the-anti-capitalist-left/

“Last night, London’s Royal Festival Hall hosted a children’s crusade. The purpose? To “celebrate” the launch of The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg’s coffee-table manifesto which collects essays from climate scholars, interspersed with photography and doom data (the cover itself is a colour chart of global temperature, moving from halcyon blue to DEFCON red). London answered the call.

Greta was in conversation with a beaming Samira Ahmed (“You’re the coolest 19-year-old I’ve ever met!”), who gently quizzed her about life as the world’s most famous climate activist. The crowd adored her. They lapped up her awkward ingenuousness. It was the perfect middle-class day out, like a trip to Glyndebourne or Blenheim. Some had even brought their young children, clearly hoping to inspire them into the same breed of activism. And, belying her reputation for aggressive sermonising, Greta was perfectly charming. The fury of “How dare you!” Greta has given way to a likeable figure of exasperated passion.

But this isn’t the only thing about the Swede that has changed. Previously, she’d sold herself as a five-foot human alarm bell, a climate Cassandra. Her role was to warn, not to instruct: her most viral moments involved her scolding political leaders, not trying to supplant them. She strenuously avoided programmatic detail, saying such things were “nothing to do with me”. But now, on stage and in this book, she has found her political feet, specifically the Left-wing ideology of anti-capitalism and de-growth.

Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no “back to normal”, she told us. “Normal” was the “system” which gave us the climate crisis, a system of “colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide”, of “racist, oppressive extractionism”. Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws — that’s why she, much like Rishi Sunak, won’t be bothering with the COP meeting this year. COP itself is little more than a “scam” which facilitates “greenwashing, lying and cheating”. Only overthrow of “the whole capitalist system” will suffice.

So now we are finally seeing the contours of Thunbergism. Run your eye down the contributors to The Climate Book and you can see who she’s been reading: Jason Hickel, Kate Raworth, Naomi Klein. For these people the climate crisis isn’t man-made. It’s made by capitalism, as are the other forms of social injustice which plague society. There’s no GDP growth — especially of the capitalist sort — without increasing carbon emissions. The only solution to this state of emergency is for rich countries to immediately abandon economic expansion as a social goal.

It is hardly surprising that Greta thinks this way given how closely tied environmental activism has become with the more experimental end of the modern Left. De-growth is surely not the only feasible solution to the climate crisis, but Greta appears to have no doubts. And, like the bulk of her generation, she has lost any faith in the gradualist, establishment Left’s power to change things. Her teens spent chiding national governments have made her one of the most famous people in the world — her twenties look set to be far more explosive, and even revolutionary.”