(Greta Thunberg with her new book)
A quick book could be read quickly. ‘No One is Too Small to
Make a Difference’ is a quick book from Penguin and is written by none other
than the latest sensation in the international environmental activism, Greta
Thunberg. A sixteen year old Swedish school girl, whose sole mission is to make
impassionate plea to the world leaders, businessmen, lobbyists, huge
corporations and all the other select few money spinners to change themselves
in order to leave the world for the future generations to leave. Thunberg says
that she is motivated by hard scientific fact about environmental depletion
which is going to finish the planet earth sooner than later. According to the
prediction the carbon emission due to fossil fuel usage all over the world is
going to set the clock of sixth mass extinction of the human species (along
with the slow and steady perishing of all other species in due course of time)
from 2030 if the emission levels are not brought down to 1.5 degree C, which in fact is lesser than the
emission level in the pre-industrial times.
This book is a small collection of Thunberg’s small but
powerful speeches (one could say cryptic word bombs that strike at the
international conscience if there is something like that still left there) made
since 2018 at various European forums including the ones in Sweden. Thunberg
considers herself as someone coming from a privileged background and she and
her ilk could conveniently forget the fact that the environmental depletion is
irrevocably underway. But she cannot sit idle once she knew that the planet
earth is about to perish. As a school girl she tried to initiate an educational
strike in her school and she found cold response even from her friends and the
school authorities. That did not stop Thunberg from sitting in front of the
Swedish Parliament and handing out pamphlets, like an evangelist in panic mode
to the people. The lone school girl’s unique protest (like the Standing Man
protest) caught the attention of the environmentalist and other activists and
soon her strike took root in the schools and girls stopped going to school for
many weeks.
(Greta Thunberg)
Thunberg is positive about her activism; she says that if so
many girls could boycott schools and that in turn evoke similar response in
other parts of the world something could really change in the ‘normal’ course
of thing. Thunberg’s fundamentals are clear. She says that anybody can bring
about a change provided they rethink about their life and its practices. The
primary concern should be the reduction of fossil fuel usage and seeking
eco-friendly alternatives. For that there should be fundamental changes in the
business pattern and the sole aim of it; making profit or amassing wealth in
the hands of a selected few. This one-sided flow of global economy has put the
whole population in the world at risk for she says that due to the carbon
emission and the ensuing ecological collapse 200 species of life are being
extinct on a daily basis. The picture is grim and the sight of Thunberg, this
sixteen year old girl standing before the world parliament and the UN reminds
one of the scene that we had witness in China’s Tiananmen Square (1989), where a young
person took on the rolling military tanks stopping them on their mission to
curb and kill the protestors who had been asking for freedom.
Thunberg does not say anything complex in all her ten
cryptic speeches at various forums and one facebook post in which she explains
to her detractors how she is not funded or backed up by lobbies or groups.
According to Thunberg, we all can do something to save the planet. Nothing new
about it but each one shifting the responsibility to the other person’s
shoulder is as good as doing nothing towards the cause. World over there are
movements and moves to reduce the emission levels but Thunberg says that there
is no point in bringing the emission level ‘down’ but it is imperative to make
a situation where there is no emission at all. That may sound her asking for
too much. But if we heed that impossibility and try to do something towards it
then we would understand that we need to change the rules of the game that we are
collectively, blindly but blissfully playing these days. Thirdly, she says that
we should be in a panic mode. When your house is on fire you wouldn’t say that
let everything burn down and we would start afresh. But what we do is to panic
and save even the most insignificant from being gutted. Panic mode is essential
to change the situation as our planet is on fire. Also there are detractors who
tell her that she should go back to school and study to become a scientist who
could contribute more to the world. To this she gives an answer which is
fascinating because she tells them that she and her friends would go back to
the classroom provided if the grown-ups take to the street to hold up the cause
and fight for it.
(A scene from the movie, My Name is Khan)
The crisp videos that have been proliferating in the social
media for the last few days have made a universal celebrity out of Greta
Thunberg as if the world was waiting for a new messiah in the horizon to
appear. The younger the savior the better it looks. That’s why I feel I think
she is another Malala in the making. Despite the fact that there soon would be
a Thunberg industry around her (films, books, merchandise such as T-shirts,
music videos, documentaries, morning time chat shows and so on. Already the
second book of Thunberg is getting ready for publication which is co-authored
by her whole family). But that shouldn’t be a reason for our cynical
overlooking of the real facts. Changing today’s habits means changing us
completely; means, if you are traveling by cars, then start using the public
transport. But the governments should pitch in there to provide cool and comfortable
public transport to the citizens. When you insist that people should walk or
cycle to the work places, there should be pedestrian and cycle friendly tracks.
That means a lot of changes in the society; that’s what exactly Thunberg
telling the world. As Kumaranasan had put it; change the laws if not they are
going to change you.
The more I look at Greta Thunberg the more I think about ‘My
Name is Khan’ (2010) the movie directed by Karan Johar with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead.
The Khan character is autistic; to be more precise, he has a condition called
Asperger’s, a slightly different condition of autism. Khan in that movie goes
to the United States of America and faces ostracism because he is a Muslim and
is identified as one in the public especially after the 9/11 attack on the twin
towers. Finally after a natural calamity he manages to go to the US President,
a black person, obviously Barak Obama and tells him, ‘My Name is Khan and I am
not a Terrorist.’ Khan does all what he could in order to convey this message
to the US President, the most powerful man of the world so that his words could
be heard all over the world and if possible understood. Greta Thunberg too has
the Asperger’s condition. She is insistent and she wants to be heard. United
Nation’s platform was one good platform for her to reach out to the world. We
are practical people so we think that nothing is possible if we go by Thunberg’s
line. But something is possible if we are ready to change that is why she says
again and again, None is too small to make a difference.
-
JohnyML
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