Greta Thunberg at EU

[DracoM]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/apr/16/greta-thunbergs-emotional-speech-to-eu-leaders-video

PLEASE listen to this.

[Serial_Apologist]

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-leaders-video

PLEASE listen to this.

Thanks for finding this DracoM. Was her speech too late to feature on the news, or was the fate of Notre Dame too important not to take up most of the news broadcasts?

I've been on about this more times than I have had answers on this forum, just seemingly unrelated bits, putting across a multi-pronged diagnosis, implicating religion, politics, education and capitalism, not necessarily in that order, and a 16-year old Swedish girl puts it across in much better English than me.

[Jazzrook]

Can this thread be merged with the other one devoted to the same topic on Platform 3, please?

Apologies, S_A.
I missed DracoM's earlier post on Platform 3.
The mainstream media seem to have been strangely silent about this magnificent speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14w8WC1I3S4

JR

[Padraig]

The mainstream media seem to have been strangely silent about this speech.

JR

Greta Thunberg, a name, and a person, to remember. I hope she makes it. I'll 'vote for her' in the coming election which probably means abandoning a life-long loyalty.

[LMcD]

Having carefully examined the lists of candidates in our forthcoming local elections (I'm a postal voter) I worked out which were most likely to come bottom - which was not too difficult, as they weigh the votes rather than count them in these parts - and decided to vote for them. I seriously considered not voting at all.

[Bella Kemp]

A remarkable child. And, gosh, what an extraordinary command of English! Good for her.

[Serial_Apologist]

A remarkable child. And, gosh, what an extraordinary command of English! Good for her.

Nothing to do with the quality of Swedish education, I'd imagine. We saw her on tonight's Attenborough, too. What we all need now is for the BBC, or some other mainstream broadcasting medium, to show a follow-up series on alternative technological solutions to unsustainable energy production at prime viewing times, such as the one I recall Channel 4 putting out in its early days.

[jayne lee wilson]

Superheroes are taking new, different and exciting forms....

[DracoM]

Nothing to do with the quality of Swedish education, I'd imagine. We saw her on tonight's Attenborough, too. What we all need now is for the BBC, or some other mainstream broadcasting medium, to show a follow-up series on alternative technological solutions to unsustainable energy production at prime viewing times, such as the one I recall Channel 4 putting out in its early days.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00049b1/climate-change-the-facts

Hope all got to see this?

[doversoul1]

In the last couple of years, at least three large bargain stores have opened within my normal shopping areas. What would the (developed) world have thought of her if she’d said we were burning our own houses down, and we should boycott these stores and give up all the other convenience and indulgence we took for granted. Or has she already said this?

Or is this not the point?

[Padraig]

In the last couple of years, at least three large bargain stores have opened within my normal shopping areas. What would the (developed) world have thought of her if she’d said we were burning our own houses down, and we should boycott these stores and give up all the other convenience and indulgence we took for granted. Or has she already said this?

Or is this not the point?

Thinking about your question, ds, I ticked off what I have done myself to help the planet - not a lot I'm afraid. So I thought I would ask Google a question to see what else I could manage to do. I framed my question and started typing - 'What can........?' Imagine my surprise when up popped Google before I could continue -'What can I do about climate change?' I take some kind of comfort from that and will now proceed to read what it says.

Does that help with your question?

[doversoul1]

Thinking about your question, ds, I ticked off what I have done myself to help the planet - not a lot I'm afraid. So I thought I would ask Google a question to see what else I could manage to do. I framed my question and started typing - 'What can........?' Imagine my surprise when up popped Google before I could continue -'What can I do about climate change?' I take some kind of comfort from that and will now proceed to read what it says.

Does that help with your question?

I wish it would be the point but I suspect that, possibly apart from a small minority like you, that is as far as most people will go; reading about what they can do and feeling good as if they had done something about it. When you think about it, do we really need to be told by Google what to give up or what to do/not to do? These days we seem to be far more interested in what comes up in the media, including Miss Thunberg speech, than with what we are physically involved in our daily lives.

I don’t have much faith in people’s will to give up things they are now so used to having. Only way to make it happen is to make those things unavailable. For this, politicians need to be working to find the ways and ensure that the people who are earning their livelihood in the production of these things will have alternative, ethical ways of earning their livings so that they can say ‘we are not working in those factories/fields etc. any more’. And of course, we will have to solve the problems of who is to decide what we should give up. Should all plastic ducks be banished?

[Serial_Apologist]

I wish it would be the point but I suspect that, possibly apart from a small minority like you, that is as far as most people will go; reading about what they can do and feeling good as if they had done something about it. When you think about it, do we really need to be told by Google what to give up or what to do/not to do? These days we seem to be far more interested in what comes up in the media, including Miss Thunberg speech, than with what we are physically involved in our daily lives.

I don’t have much faith in people’s will to give up things they are now so used to having. Only way to make it happen is to make those things unavailable. For this, politicians need to be working to find the ways and ensure that the people who are earning their livelihood in the production of these things will have alternative, ethical ways of earning their livings so that they can say ‘we are not working in those factories/fields etc. any more’. And of course, we will have to solve the problems of who is to decide what we should give up. Should all plastic ducks be banished?

One of the more honorable aspects of the Christian tradition consisted in the "swords to ploughshares" idea - that a society operated on Christian pacifist principles would not be making weapons of war. This was tried in the "alternative products" campaign co-oerdinated by the shop stewards combines at Lucas Aerospace in the 1970s, written about at the time by Mike Cooley in "Architect or Bee?" The idea was put forward that the workforce came up with three alternative products to those currently running out of sales options, thus resulting in mass redundancies. The idea that ordinary skilled workers are equally capable of coming up with ideas for products and the running of enterprises has a long proud history in socialist mythology - Lenin's "State and Revolution" was largely about the formation society-wide of organs of power and decision-making evolving to the point at which they would take over from the privileged ruling classes worldwide: this being seen as synonymous with socialism, and was taking place concurrently in the Russian Revolution.

In Russia the natural progression was short circuited by the military intervention of the western powers acting of course for the international ruling classes. Similarly, albeit on much smaller scale, the Lucas Aerospace initiative - encouraged incidentally by Tony Benn, who at a time of mass redundancies under the excuse of "rationalisation" unsuccessfully tried to get it included as Labour Party policy: the right wing under Wilson, then Callaghan, were opposed for class collaborationist reasons, while the trade union bureaucracy argued that the business of trade union/party co-ordination, supported by the Communist Party by the way, should limit itself to improving wages, holidays and conditions or work. This had happened post WW2 in the top-down nationalisation model for industry and services under Attlee that gave state ownership the bad name it still has to this day. A big missed opportunity. The three alternative products - a heat exchange unit, a road/rail vehicle and a disabled vehicle - would all have been ecologically non-suspect and socially beneficial.

[greenilex]

Worker control of manufacturing policy is one of the foundations of cooperation in the real sense...one member one vote, common ownership and an effective communications system within the cooperative enterprise.
OK, I know it is extremely hard work and cumbersome and complicated but I don’t know of any other solution. It has to grow slowly from the ground up. Once we are educated into it we can’t imagine another way of doing things.

[doversoul1]

Worker control of manufacturing policy is one of the foundations of cooperation in the real sense...one member one vote, common ownership and an effective communications system within the cooperative enterprise.
OK, I know it is extremely hard work and cumbersome and complicated but I don’t know of any other solution. It has to grow slowly from the ground up. Once we are educated into it we can’t imagine another way of doing things.

I very much doubt that factory workers in Bangladesh, Turkey, and many other countries where products for the West are manufactured have any chance of having the benefit of such policy as worker control all the while there are demands from the West. But then, if we all stop buying these products, those people will lose their earnings. So what do we do?