Thread by @SteB777

1) Again @GretaThunberg offers some of the most insightful commentary on the climate and ecological emergency. No one sees the big picture any clearer than this. What she says seems deceptively simple, but it is entirely accurate.

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1402331038119084042

2) What I wanted to start this mini thread for is there is now a tendency, to tell individuals what they should do to address the climate and ecological crisis, as if this is the way to address the crisis, and why we have not addressed it i.e. the public are responsible.

3) However, as Greta brilliantly expresses in just a few words, it is impossible for anyone to live a truly sustainable lifestyle in a system controlled by governments which impose an unsustainable system on us.

4) The single most successful action an individual can take to address the climate and ecological emergency is to put pressure on politicians to act, and to persuade those close them do the same and to convey the situation to them.

5) Greta herself has led by example as usual, in getting her parents to see and understand the depth of the crisis. As she often points out, they were always progressive in their outlook, but ignored the ecological crisis.

6) This bit is ironic as Greta's critics falsely claim Greta is a puppet of her parents. Yet despite both her parents having a public profile in Sweden for a long time, neither had any history of campaigning on environmental matters until Greta became environmentally aware.

7) In fact until a few years ago Greta's mother had a career as an international opera singer travelling the world, flying, and only gave it up when Greta persuaded her of how flying set a bad example.

8) This is a shining example of how to be an activist. Work not only on convincing politicians to act and to bring pressure to pressure to bear on them, but to convince those around us to act, to speak out and bring pressure to bear to act.

9) As a proportion of the population, environmental activists are quite small, but the numbers are thanks to Greta and the revival of the environmental movement she inspired by inspiring others, are still significant.

10) If every environmentally aware person could just influence a few people around them, to raise them out of their mental slumber, to demand action to the point it influences how they and others vote*, it could greatly swell the numbers by many times. It could multiply pressure.

11) If those who became aware and swelled the numbers by several times, similarly influenced just a few more people, before long, the numbers could get very big.

12) It's an unfortunate time in a pandemic to talk about viral growth, but we can see with our own eyes, how one person infecting just a few others, can result in big numbers in a relatively short space of time. This is how we need to spread the message.

13) The best example of the power of exponential growth is the chessboard problem, where a grain is placed on each square of a chessboard, and then doubled on each subsequent square.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and…

14) With common sense intuition this doubling for every square on a chessboard (64 squares), starting with just one grain, will not give you that great a number. In fact you end up with 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. 2000 times the annual production of wheat in the world.

15) If every climate activist could just convert one person to the cause of demanding immediate action to address the climate and ecological emergency, and that person would just convince one more, the total effect would be massive.

16) In fact, if truth be told this is what I have been doing for a long time. It is the motivation behind what I do. As I am only one person with not much of a platform, I focus on influencing the influencers. If only bits of my ideas are picked up, it will multiply many times.

17) I've long recommended the bottom up approach, and the model of the new movement inspired by Greta. There have been many brave environmentalists battling away for nearly 60 years, but the movement had not broken out of the minority category.

18) The movement inspired by Greta, who has inspired many more, each with their own powerful and unique voice, as grown a worldwide movement which is still growing.

19) This is the basis for all these silly conspiracy theories about how Greta is a puppet for some unnamed cabal using her. Because they cannot understand how such a simple movement grew to be so big and influential.

20) Yes billionaires and their control of the corporate media, their bankrolling of politicians and political parties, etc, controls the minds of the majority. Yet none of these people are promoting Greta or her ideals, or those of #FridaysForFuture.

21) After all, if you're a billionaire, the call to equity, not flying, living simply and not consuming much is hardly a view of the world you want to promote, and they don't.
climatechangenews.com/2019/10/02/gre…

22) Instead billionaires try to undermine Greta's approach and to instead promote their own ideas of saving us all (it's really all about them saving themselves and their wealth). There is no big money behind Greta, just wisdom.
irishtimes.com/culture/books/…

23) The main way to make a difference is the promotion of truth, the scientific evidence, an accurate big picture view of the whole situation, and a few influencing a few more in a bottom up manner to put pressure on those in charge to acknowledge the crisis, and to act.

24) The more influence you have, the more important it is for you to use that influence. But using this model, it works if you can just influence one or two people. Everyone can do something like this.

25) *When I say to influence how people vote, I do not really mean voting for any candidate or party in particular, because most are totally inadequate. I mean not voting for anyone who fails to act on the crisis.

@Fridays4future @GeorgeMonbiot @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen @HollyWildChild @JKSteinberger @NaomiAKlein @NaomiOreskes @billmckibben @ChrisGPackham @XRebellionUK @gailbradbrook @RogerHallamCS21 @Luisamneubauer

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