Shame Greta Shame

Is ‘shame’ a good tactic to get our shameless leaders to engage with the ‘truth’?

By David Salt

An open letter to Greta Thunberg from one Australian

Dear Greta

Thanks for your efforts. You’ve done well. Your speeches, UN discussions and the student rallies you helped inspire have, hopefully, shifted the debate on climate change. (God knows the outcries from scientists don’t seem to be achieving much.)

However, I have to say, I am terribly fatigued by the events of recent weeks. It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I was elated by the grassroots nature of the students’ Climate Strike, impressed by your fearless denunciations of our world order, appalled by the vicious blowback you then endured, and, finally, I am incredulous at the shameless tissue of lies our national leader, Scott Morrison, told the UN Assembly in the wake of your efforts. His whole engagement with climate change (and his defence of Australia’s efforts to engage with it) fills me with shame.

And that, Greta, is a terrible shame in itself. Because, rather than engage with your heroic message, I find myself longing for the emotional turmoil of these recent weeks to simply recede, be swallowed by the media cycle and let me, us, them, get back to the comfort of business as usual.

Unfortunately, as you so passionately outlined (along with almost all the available science), ‘business as usual’ is neither sustainable nor fair. Business as usual is killing our life support systems, drowning our poorest citizens and disinheriting future generations (which, of course, includes you and the youth of today).

You have every right to stoke our shame on this but I worry that for some it simply causes them to double down on their lies. ‘Double down’, it’s an American piece of jargon that now dominates our media, possibly a sign of our partisan times. Rather than admit you’re caught out on a fib or deception, you reinforce it, double down, by telling an even bigger lie. But I digress.

In any case, Greta, I wanted to tell you that many Australians are very supportive of your crusade. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include our national leaders. They fervently don’t agree with you. Under their leadership, our country is not prepared to play its fair part in saving the future. But they’re not prepared to even acknowledge this, instead claiming Australia is doing its fair share. Sounds shameless, doesn’t it?

I won’t take you through the details of this denial. That has been done comprehensively by many others (for example, see the report by the Climate Council and this story in The Guardian). It seems the facts simply don’t count. But the broad gist of our Government’s defence is that our emission targets are strong (they’re not, they’re among the weakest of all developed countries); we’re doing our bit (we’re not, we’re responsible for 1.3% of global emissions but only represent 0.3% of the global population, indeed we have the highest per capita emissions in the developed world and we are the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world); and that we’ll reach our (inadequate) targets at a canter (we won’t, our emissions are actually increasing and have been from the past 5 years).

Our Prime Minister even had the audacity to throw in at the end of his UN statement that our most climate-threatened natural ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef is in good condition: “our Great Barrier Reef remains one of the world’s most pristine areas of natural beauty,” he trumpeted. “Feel free to visit it. Our reef is vibrant and resilient and protected under the world’s most comprehensive reef management plan.”

I’m sure you know this Greta but, in case you don’t, in 2016 and 2017 the Great Barrier Reef was severely damaged through back-to-back bleaching events which killed half of its corals. Australia’s current emissions target goal, if followed by other countries, would sign the death warrant of the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs around the world.

What can I say? It’s just shameless.

So, while I agree with your message, I worry about the strategy. How do you bring about change by shaming people who are shameless?

This is not just about Australia’s current political configuration. Populism, partisanship and win-at-all-costs seem to be the modus operandi of an increasing number of national leaders all around the world (Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro being three other examples). If they can so shamelessly deny the evidence (simply discount it as just ‘fake news’), then shaming them to change their position may be a futile endeavour.

In any event, keep up the good work. It could be I’m quite wrong. Our more ‘mature’ approach of appealing to rationality, logic and incremental improvement does not appear to be achieving much at the moment. The world is moving away from a sustainable space.

Your call to the younger generation, on the other hand, does appear to be generating grass roots support and action. Shaming our leaders may not influence the shameless behaviour of those leaders but maybe that’s not the point. Your efforts are creating a groundswell of engagement that may, in the years to come, be the thing that actually makes a difference. So, keep it up.

All the best

David