I have noticed a sizeable portion of people on my social media feeds being vocal against Greta Thunberg and her initiative #FridaysForFuture
These critics seem to base their opinion on 3 major reasons:
- She is all talk and no action.
- She missed school for months and encourages other students to do the same.
- There are factors at play which are beyond her understanding.
Let me endeavour to address each point separately.
- She is all talk and no action.
While Greta herself may not be able to do much on ground due to her hectic travel (and given that she does not use airplanes), she is inspiring action across the world. She has created a global army of passionate volunteers who are driving action on the ground. It is commendable how a young girl has brought this many people across countries, religions, and ideologies to align to a cause, with almost zero resources and purely though 100% will. While doing something is tough, inspiring a million people to do is slightly tougher (maybe?).
2. She missed school for months and encourages other students to do the same.
The beauty of the whole movement is the frugality of the financial and social cost involved. Greta was skipping school and protesting for months before she got any recognition or people began to join her. It is not child’s play (ironically) to stick to one cause, larger than yourself, without observing any recognition or impact. In my opinion, it is a representation of sheer tenacity.
3. There are factors at play which are beyond her understanding.
The whole point of the movement is that, no matter how important it is what you are doing right now, saving the environment is a greater priority. We have become conditioned to work on things which seem like a greater priority in our lives and have developed a thick skin to general discussions around environment. We would love for it to be saved, but are not willing to commit the will or resources required. Someone here is putting all her resources and will to do what matters most.
Thought and discussion inspires action. It has become cool to talk about the environment again and a good proportion of that reason is because of Greta. I recently visited a premium coffee shop where a customer was complaining about them not having paper straws. At a recent conference on leadership, a participant critiqued the organisers for having too much single-use plastic in their goodie-bags after which the organisers swore to have 0% single-use plastic conferences.
If we do not encourage Greta and this movement, it might take ages to have something like this to unite us at this level, again. Then, it may be too late.
#FridaysForFuture
Mudit Yadav