Greta Thunberg: TIME's Person of the Year 2019 | Hacker News Reader

Greta Thunberg: TIME's Person of the Year 2019

time.com

I'm sure that people here are more than aware that we should certainly do more to address climate change before we see more emerging catastrophes in the new decade. By that, the action that should happen must be practical and makes sense to act upon before those important deadlines. All thanks to the scientists and activists highlighting this and to Greta + social media for further amplifying this.

However, while she is deserving of this, I tend to be put off of by her constant berating and shaming of the accused via her scripted speeches which really doesn't help changing people's minds especially the 'big bad orange man' and going off on a 2 week zero carbon trip from Portsmouth to New York to show its possible, but I'd say for many, it is in-practical for now.

She (and mostly the behind the scenes grown-ups) brought this into the public agenda rightfully so, but perhaps she could change a lot of minds if she could change her own approach to raising awareness without being so spiteful towards everyone (even to the converted and loyal) and without being used by the extreme climate-change grown ups projecting her catastrophe-like and scaremongering rhetoric.

One day, if she was able to change the mind of the 'orange man' then she + the activists should all be deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace prize is very political and plays favorites. She already won a Right Livelihood Award "alternative Nobel prize." I don't think people should win awards because they have the spotlight but because they got something done. She may well get something major done, and we sure need it either way... then I hope she wins every award because she would basically be one of the literal saviors of the world, like that Russian officer who didn't launch the nukes.

Well deserved. She has brought the seriousness and gravity of climate change into the public discourse without the sugar coating and hand waviness activists have had in the past. The bluntness people criticize her for is exactly what we need now- world and industry leaders need to be held accountable.

Which leaders? Please be specific and provide a full list of names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_heads_of_state...

With the exception of the government of Bhutan, the only carbon-negative country as of 2019.

That's a pretty high bar; I'd also exclude the countries on track for their 1.5 degree C Paris commitments, Morocco and Gambia. Still a pretty small and dismal list.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/

This maybe too political for HN. It's nice to bring attention to a change agent but the more important part is the issue: there is a climate change emergency that depends on getting CO2 to 290±10 ppm rapidly. We better mostly agree that and on taking action or we and most species are all effectively dead sometime <1000 years.

So, if you had a trillion dollars (less than student debt and less than the wars in the Middle East) how would you spend it on remediation?

0. Bio carbon capture & sequestration (CCS)

Some ideas:

- ferrous oceanic seeding of phytoplankton - only small amounts needed (See IRONEX I)

- Kelp farming + underground sequestration - there's an absolutely massive kelp forest between Mexico and Africa, and thousands of tons wash-up on Mexico's beaches daily

1. Solar radiation management (SRM)

- numerous ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation_management

And please don't say planting trees because it doesn't scale well [i] and they aren't a permanent sequestration solution. More trees + increasing wildfires = more soot falling on glaciers = faster melting glaciers = more sea level rise = a really bad idea.

i. https://youtu.be/Z5uuIcS4kqE

How about simply altering the way we now farm industrially so that we can trap carbon in the soil? See permaculture and biointensive farming practices.

Regenerative agriculture is the term I keep seeing thrown around a lot - do you happen to know how it's different than these?

Unfortunately I am not familiar with that term. Sorry!

Didn't the HK protestors win the online poll? Was that not legitimate?

And in 2009 the winner was Moot from 4chan with the order spelling out "Marble Cakes also the game".

https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/time-magazine-throws-up-it...

I would argue Moot had more sociatal impact than many 'legit' winners did. Good or bad, I will leave up to the reader.

I'm actually a little surprised by the general praise of this move here on HN, if only because I don't see what, if any impact she has had on either climate change, or climate change awareness. If anything, she's only contributed to the overall polarization of these topic. Most people I know don't find her engaging or interesting in any way, but rather grating, petulant, and full of childish arrogance. At least that sense to be the tone that's constantly reviled on social media along political lines.

If she somehow found a way to inspire change from both parties working in unison, then I'd get it. But these sorts of popularity contests are usually unimportant, but personally, I think it should've gone to the HK protestors. That at least is an interesting story, and is bringing forth discussions around China's influence on American businesses, as well as the general struggle in China for political freedom.

Amazing that HN flagged this one but not previous Time's Person of the Year posts.

Well deserved! I'm interested to see what the fallout from this will be, as climate change has ultimately become a politically divisive topic.

This fashion of photographing a person from the "frog perspective" seems to be very much a part of the desire to spread anxiety. Rappers in the 90's used to punch down at a camera pointed up from the ground and I guess it means to subliminally elevate the figure and imply that the audience is lower than the "authority" figure up shot.

This is frankly a little wild to me. It's a low-angle photo, so it's meant to indicate that we are all beneath an authority figure, and to spread anxiety? Low-angle photos are common to the point of banality in non-insidious photography, and can communicate all sorts of generically positive feelings. It's a little disturbing that you're reaching this far to find something to attack.

You get anxiety from a picture of a 16-year-old girl?

I mean, if you don't "elevate" the "Person of the year" with a slight low angle shot idk when you'll do it... Why wouldn't you want to elevate someone trying to better the world ?

She brought 'Flying Shame' to the US in a solar powered sailboat:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/flight-shame-comes-to-the-u-s-v...

And then had her crew fly across the Atlantic to bring the boat home:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7365909/Greta-Thunb...

What are you trying to imply ? It's not like one person faults/hypocrisy somehow invalidate science.

I was pointing out that Time selected someone who had such faults and hypocrisy. She's in good company with MLK, Clinton, Hitler, Stalin, Krushchev, and Khomeini. [1]

1. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/...

I don't think it was shame but a photo-op / statement-through-deed that big changes need to happen. However, individual-level veganism, recycling and eco transport isn't the whole solution. We need a holistic approach and top-down leadership integrity to make difficult changes to arrive at overall rapid, net negative global CO2 for the foreseeable future. If we don't, I better sneak into Zuck's NZ prepper bunker and hide in the pantry.

The true climat crisis is how people worry about the weather of tomorrow ignoring the real issue of the people’s comfort of living.

We are no longer cavemen looking for shelter. Look at the Netherlands, half their country has been reclaimed from the sea. Look at China during their Olympics. They literally made it rain over the suburbs in order to keep the skies clear above stadiums.

The climate and the planet will be alright. People are gonna suffer from this moral panic.

> ignoring the real issue of the people’s comfort of living

I am sorry to disturb your comfortable life (you comment here so like it or not, its true), but some of us see the drain the planet and living beings on it go down, and it ain't pretty and will get worse, much worse.

Maybe if a billion of climate refugees will arrive knocking on your country's door begging for survival, you may reconsider your opinions. Some of us prefer earlier actions, not only because of that.

It's difficult to get a man to reduce his carbon emissions when his air conditioning, daily Big Mac, bitcoin miner rig, long solo commute in a Cadillac Escalade and weekly jet-setting depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair also said this ;)

China had to make it rain in order to temporarily improve air quality, because the air is polluted. Asian countries are littered with garbage and recycling imported from the west. People are already suffering.

> Look at the Netherlands, half their country has been reclaimed from the sea. Look at China during their Olympics. They literally made it rain over the suburbs in order to keep the skies clear above stadiums.

And I'll bet that work was done because of sociopolitical concern being raised, not in spite of it.

There is a "moral panic" problem with global warming, but it occurs when individuals are shamed for their personal choices instead of putting the scrutiny on how the overall economy is shaped by large corporations and governments. That shaming is largely fueled by those very powers peddling the idea that environmentalism merely means that we all "do our part" by reusing shopping bags or buying a Tesla or whatever.

The people who will be comfortable with a more chaotic climate are those with wealth. Comfort won’t be there for most of us. Aussie bushfires are about 20000sq km this season. Volunteers are sacrificing their salary to put them out, I guess there is some patriotism driving that but at some point it is going to be too much. How do you get comfy in a hurricane or tsunami? Build a 5m thick concrete fortress? For everyone?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com