Greta Thunberg and COVID-19
I have no idea of Greta Thunberg has commented on COVID-19 now that we are in 2020.
I've thought many times in the past days about her September 2019 speech whose focus was on Global Climate Change at the United Nations in New York where she said:
When she delivered her speech I noted her line about money and the "fairy tales of eternal economic growth." I knew then that she was correct. Nothing, no thing grows eternally and exponentially. Living things die. And, for most things in life there are "seasons" of change and cycles and patterns of expanding/contracting. Even stone, granite, carbon, at the right temperature or pressure, changes shape and form!
With millions of workers in shift with COVID-19, and with the potential for tens of millions of people to be shifted out of work for a long-term ( we might see the entire collapse of "travel" "as we have known it") it is a reminder that Greta was right.
Of course, it's not just her. Countless numbers of current and ancient farmers, indigenous persons, and purveyors of Wisdom in various traditions, within many religious forms of life have been saying the same thing for hundreds of years. Our care for Creation and one another matters.
Greta ended her speech with these words: "The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not."
She was more prophetic than she thought, it seems, as to the immediacy of the changes that would emerge with animal species pushed together leading to virus mutations and this specific new virus.
May we discern a better way forward - Change has come.
Toward eupan ~
~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.
I've thought many times in the past days about her September 2019 speech whose focus was on Global Climate Change at the United Nations in New York where she said:
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!" (emphasis added)
When she delivered her speech I noted her line about money and the "fairy tales of eternal economic growth." I knew then that she was correct. Nothing, no thing grows eternally and exponentially. Living things die. And, for most things in life there are "seasons" of change and cycles and patterns of expanding/contracting. Even stone, granite, carbon, at the right temperature or pressure, changes shape and form!
With millions of workers in shift with COVID-19, and with the potential for tens of millions of people to be shifted out of work for a long-term ( we might see the entire collapse of "travel" "as we have known it") it is a reminder that Greta was right.
Of course, it's not just her. Countless numbers of current and ancient farmers, indigenous persons, and purveyors of Wisdom in various traditions, within many religious forms of life have been saying the same thing for hundreds of years. Our care for Creation and one another matters.
Greta ended her speech with these words: "The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not."
She was more prophetic than she thought, it seems, as to the immediacy of the changes that would emerge with animal species pushed together leading to virus mutations and this specific new virus.
May we discern a better way forward - Change has come.
Toward eupan ~
~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.
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