Greta thunberg

Friday

Roger Kimball

The benevolence trap

On May 12, the Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad published a book called Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind. It’s a smart book, immensely pertinent to a time, like ours, that is awash with this diseased form of self-infatuated fellow feeling. Dr. Saad is correct: “Suicidal empathy is a civilization malady that has entered every nook and cranny of our lives.” One of the peculiarities of the malady that Dr. Saad diagnoses is its persistence. Socialism – which is the generic name of this intoxicating and addictive drug – has failed everywhere it has been tried. No matter. The world manufactures new versions of Greta Thunberg, AOC and Bernie Sanders faster than they can be repudiated. Democrats, Dr. Saad observes, are the party of empathy.

benevolence

Wednesday

Eva Terry

How justified is climate-change alarmism?

For decades, the picture of Earth’s future – as laid out by journalists and climate scientists alike – has been bleak. By 2070 we will see famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us, melted icecaps, flooding, extreme hurricanes and ever-present tropical storms. "Vast swathes" of the planet will be inhospitable for human life. And Greta Thunberg, in her late sixties, will wear a gas mask as she sits on the steps of Swedish Parliament with a cardboard sign declaring, "I told you so." Advocates have poured gasoline on the climate-alarmism fire earnestly, backed by reports declaring, "There really is no serious scientific debate remaining about climate change.

Global Climate Strike on September 20, 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland (Getty)

Tuesday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The problem with Greta Thunberg

Like Agatha Christie’s “rescuer from the sea," Greta Thunberg swept upon Gaza to save the starving, the homeless, the bombed – and the bombing – from destruction at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces, only to be intercepted by one of the IDF’s boats and offered a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in plastic (which looked not at all like an item from a Jewish delicatessen). La Thunberg later characterized the incident as a kidnapping. Following that, she was presumably (as promised by the Israeli Defense Minister) compelled to view footage of the events of October 7, 2023, before being loaded on to a CO2-dispersing passenger jet and flown to France, en route to her native Sweden. She explained that to remain longer in Israel would have been to discredit her cause.

Greta

Tuesday

Neeraja Deshpande

Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg: strange bedfellows

“People who have kids do need to have 3 kids to make up for those who have 0 or 1 kid or [the] population will collapse,” Elon Musk recently wrote on X, in response to a post by the influencer Mario Nawfal warning that “if things continue as they are, humans have their days numbered.” This is increasingly the tenor of the right-wing discourse around declining birth rates: it is not enough to feel serious concern about the consequences of fewer humans coming into existence—about schools and colleges shuttering, about pensions running out of funds, about the intangible loss that comes with fewer children, fewer siblings, fewer friends, fewer souls.

Sunday

Stephen L. Miller

The left gives up on saving the planet

In his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama praised American innovation and name-checked Tesla. “There are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn't even exist 10 or 20 years ago. Jobs at companies like Google, and eBay and Tesla,” he said.  “So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America.”Well the future is here, ten years later, and those innovative electric vehicles are being vandalized, their drivers accosted, and there are even domestic terror attacks on dealerships, with several reports of mass arson, threats and damage at several dealerships across the country.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

COP28 is nothing but hot air

What position should the distant observer take on the COP28 conference in Dubai? That the sight of 70,000 delegates flying into a desert oil state from around the world to discuss human impacts on climate change is beyond satire and that its proceedings are never likely to rise above Greta Thunberg’s encapsulation of all such jamborees as “blah blah blah?” Or that the climate problem is now so obvious and urgent that all efforts towards global action, however small, should be uncynically applauded? I leave that choice on the table.

COP28

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Of course Taylor Swift deserves to be TIME’s Person of the Year

Well, it had to happen. Taylor Swift has been the most talked-about person in the world for some time now. After 2023 saw her conquer both stadiums and the world’s cinemas with her Eras Tour film — which, with a current gross of $249 million, is now the highest-earning concert movie ever made — her remarkable year has been capped off both with the enormous success of her re-recorded album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and now, the news that TIME magazine has awarded the thirty-three-year-old musician the accolade of Person of the Year. She follows in the footsteps of everyone from Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. There are several noteworthy features of the accolade.

taylor swift

Friday

Cockburn

Greta Thunberg, milkshake duck

Is Peter Thiel a fed? Peter Thiel made billions of dollars working closely with the federal government, selling technologies like Palantir at massive profits. Now, there’s the suggestion that Thiel’s ties to the government may be a lot closer than previously thought — a bombshell report in Business Insider alleges that Thiel has worked as a confidential human source for the FBI starting in 2021, likely about foreign involvement in Silicon Valley. Per Insider, Thiel was recruited by controversial far-right activist Charles Johnson.Thiel’s political involvement has scaled back in recent months; in 2022, he batted 0.500 in getting his former employees elected to the United States Senate, helping get J.D.

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Who will be the next great Climate Teen?

Now that truant Greta Thunberg is all grown up and aging out of her usefulness, progressive groups and our media are on the hunt, American Idol-style, for the next great Climate Teen. Just as the left puts teenagers on the frontline for gun control, and the Biden administration uses rosy-cheeked heartthrobs (much like Hamas does with human shields) to yell at people on TikTok, the media is desperately thirsty for a new batch of young climate activists with the charisma of boy band stars and the backing of thousands of lawyers and parents with political ambitions — they just won’t tell you that last part. Take the case of Badge and Lander Busse from Montana.

climate

Tuesday

Teresa Mull

Climate change’s biggest casualty is my winter wardrobe

For Christmas this year, Santa Claus brought me the most splendid Maine Mountain Parka from L.L. Bean, rife with thoughtful details and flawless construction from hood to hem. Standing in the living room, I admired the weather-proof cuffs and pulled the oversized zipper with rubber grip pull cord (a must when wearing gloves). I fastened the button-front storm placket — such a satisfyingly haughty act, akin, I’d imagine, to how one of Napoleon’s cavalrymen might have felt strapping on his saber. I flipped the adjustable snorkel hood with its removable faux-fur ruff onto my head and burrowed my hands into the deep snap pockets. I then plopped down on the couch and gazed smugly out the window at the bomb cyclone raging outside.

Saturday

Katherine Dee

Andrew Tate and the making of an internet villain

Andrew Tate, that rascally misogynist everyone loves to hate, has been in the news for the better part of this holiday season. First, the World Economic Forum’s favorite climate change influencer, Greta Thunberg, “clapped back” at him on Twitter, suggesting he had a small penis. This galvanized Tate to publish an insane response video. The story didn’t stop there, though, because how could it? In this video, a pizza box was in view, and according to Twitter conspiracy theorists, it alerted Romanian authorities to Tate’s location, where he was taken into custody for sex trafficking. What a neat narrative arc!

andrew tate

Sunday

Chadwick Moore

Where in the world is Greta Thunberg?

When the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York in September, climate-watchers may have noticed a pesky, pigtailed vacuum. Greta Thunberg, who spent the summer of 2019 stalking the East Coast after taking a prince of Monaco’s yacht across the Atlantic, reached her zenith that September — the last time this body met in person — at the Climate Action Summit where she delivered her creepy, memed-into-oblivion “how dare you” speech. But the chilling little entity straight out of Kubrick was notably absent at this year’s assembly, at a time when the Biden administration is pushing climate hysteria more fervently than ever.

thunberg

Tuesday

Peter Van Buren

The left thinks social media is reality

Spotify once took a run at Joe Rogan. YouTube banned Dan Bongino. Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene. Twitter also famously canceled Donald Trump, and for a while, me. As with the suspension of Trump (and on a much, much lesser scale, me) progressives cheered the deplatformings the way public lynchings used to attract a picnicking crowd. The left controls social media (as well as most mainstream media) and so day by day their unreal world becomes ethically more cleansed, more free of things they do not like, and with all the bad news (Hunter Biden) made to go away. The world online is the way they want it to be, with the real world held at bay behind the screen. Like living in The Villages in Florida, or maybe in the Matrix.

Friday

Cockburn

Who REALLY blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

Four days have passed since the Nord Stream pipelines mysteriously ruptured in the Baltic Sea, just outside of NATO territory. Sabotage is suspected. Many in the West blame Vladimir Putin; others, such as Tucker Carlson, Radek Sikorski and, er, Vladimir Putin, blame America. But to truly solve this mystery, Cockburn thinks circumstances require us to cast the net a little wider. Here are some potential saboteurs deserving of further scrutiny. Greta Thunberg How dare we! The gray Swedish doom-gremlin has dedicated much of the last years to warning us of the looming Armageddon, traipsing from the UN to Davos to COP26. Is it farfetched to suggest that Thunberg might take dramatic steps to ensure her cause is the only option on the table?

nord stream

Monday

Rikki Schlott

Young people should see climate change as a challenge

I’ve been fed two competing storylines for as long as I can remember. On one side, the world I’ve inherited is a tinderbox just waiting to erupt in flames. If I’m not the one engulfed, then surely my children or my grandchildren will be. And on the other side... crickets. The conversation around climate change has no spectrum. It’s just a bimodal screaming match luring young people into either skipping along into the sunset in blissful ignorance or slowly sliding into the fiery pits of hell in nihilistic resignation. Through young eyes, the dominant message from the right amounts to: your ecological inheritance is diddly-squat to us.

climate change

Saturday

Peter Wood

Our present bewilderment

Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers issued last September, has been praised to high heavens by Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Naomi Klein, and reviewers at NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. This ought to be enough to warn any sensible reader to stay far away from its pages and to resign promptly from any reading group that nominates it for collective perusal. But I am not always sensible. The title lured me, for what better word to describe our Zeitgeist?

bewilderment

Monday

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Energy is the most important issue in the world

One issue more than any other will dominate airtime and influence policy in 2022: energy. Americans are seeing the highest prices at the pump in seven years. Since Biden took office, average gas prices are up by more than $1 a gallon. In November, gas prices in Mono County, California hit more than $6 per gallon, forcing some residents to drive to Nevada (where gas taxes are lower) to buy fuel. The price of natural gas in the US is at its highest in seven years, and up more than 180 percent in the last year alone. In Europe, the situation is even worse. Europe’s gas reserves are at record lows. In Germany, which already had the EU’s highest energy prices, bills are up 30 percent in a year.

energy

Thursday

Bill Wirtz

Greta Thunberg didn’t win the German elections

Greta Thunberg is back in business. Previously slowed down by European pandemic restrictions, the Fridays For Future movement has now hit the streets, starting in Berlin. 'We must not give up, there is no going back now,' Thunberg told thousands of local protesters. The appeals and influence of her movement have translated, at least somewhat, into a stronger climate-focused youth vote in last month's German elections. The Green party has made significant advances in Parliament, becoming one of the kingmakers in upcoming coalition talks. Yet Germany’s environmentalists aren’t the only ones who outperformed their previous results. The liberal-democrat FDP scored 23 percent of Germany’s first-time voters, the same amount as the Greens.

greta

Thursday

Matilda Olofsson

Why I support Greta Thunberg in her fight against COVID-19

My name is Matilda Olofsson and I am Greta Thunberg’s arch-nemesis. For every positive action her climate activism encourages, I have taken it upon myself to cause an equally negative reaction. For example, when Greta challenged world leaders to address the issue of reducing carbon emissions with her famous ‘HOW DARE YOU?’ speech, I marched straight down to my local park and chastised a bunch of kids for riding around on push bikes when limousines exist. So naturally, when I heard of Greta's inclusion on a CNN coronavirus 'facts and fears' panel I was livid.

greta

Wednesday

Cockburn

Does Greta Thunberg have the answer to COVID-19?

COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory. World leaders are baffled by how to respond. The science keeps contradicting itself. The world’s greatest mathematicians can’t keep up with the ever-changing data sets. Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help? Never fear, Greta’s here. That’s right. Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most. On Thursday evening, CNN will host a live town hall called ‘Coronavirus: Facts and Fears’, featuring former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Miss Thunberg.

Greta Thunberg