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I Am Greta: The coming of age movie wrapped up in a super-hero flick

Posted on October 29, 2020 by dishanth

There are many extraordinary things about the new documentary I Am Greta.

The first is that the film happened at all. Its director Nathan Grossman had never made a documentary feature before.

The former film student was curious when he heard, in 2018, that 15-year-old Swedish girl Greta Thunberg had decided to bunk off school to sit alone outside the country’s parliament in Stockholm as part of what she was calling a “climate strike”.

He started filming a few days later. At first he shot in a low-quality mode on his camera to save space on memory cards, thinking he would be lucky if her story made a short feature for the local news.

But, within weeks, children around the world had started their own climate strikes. Arnold Schwarzenegger was retweeting Thunberg’s posts and Grossman had switched to full high definition.

He continued to film Thunberg and her father at every twist and turn of the adventure that unfolded over the next year.

Greta Thunberg’s story tells of how a troubled and lonely child discovers her hidden powers. DOGWOOF FILMS

And what an adventure. Thunberg herself said it could be a movie but it would be a very surreal one “because the plot would be so unlikely”.

Just being along for the ride is exciting enough, but I Am Greta does much more than that.

What Grossman has made is a coming of age movie wrapped up in a super-hero flick. This is the story of how a troubled and lonely child discovers her hidden powers and uses them to change the course of the world.

The secret of Thunberg’s charisma

The whole thing is just so unlikely. It turns out that this small, rather dour girl with pigtails has a preternatural charisma.

As we unravel the paradox of why that is, we begin to understand what is so special about Thunberg.

Most people don’t realise how unforgiving documentaries are on their subjects: If you pretend to be something you are not, you will be found out.

The only way to be “good” at films like this is simply to be yourself.

Watching the film, you realise Thunberg is so fascinating because she is utterly authentic. She isn’t doing this for appearances, she isn’t doing it because she wants fame or attention, she is doing it because she has no choice.

She feels compelled to do something – anything – to try to get the world to take climate change seriously.

Why she can’t look away

Early on in the film, she tries to explain why. “Once the climate crisis has got your attention you can’t look away,” she says.

“Once you understand the magnitude of the problem, you can’t erase it.”

She doesn’t realise that this is the diametric opposite of how most other people feel: We know it’s happening but do everything we can to look away.

Grossman followed Thunberg for months to capture the footage in the documentary. DOGWOOF FILMS / LEV RADIN

The compulsion to campaign

Thunberg gives us her take on events in diary excerpts. We learn she has no doubt that Asperger’s Syndrome is a central part of what gives her such “laser-focus”.

“I have it, I wouldn’t say I suffer from it,” she corrects a reporter at one point. And the film shows how campaigning has helped lift Thunberg out of profound depression.

Greta Thunberg has continued with her campaign this year. GETTY IMAGES

As her influence begins to grow, there is a wonderful sequence on a train where she is filmed writing her diary.

“It feels almost indescribable that something is finally happening,” she writes and breaks into a contented smile. “There are so many who are interested in the same things as I am.”

She talks about how lonely she was at school and the eating disorders she battles. At one point her father mentions how her “selective mutism” and “compulsions” have vanished.

There’s a touching scene where her mother chokes back tears as she describes the progress Thunberg has made. Yet you can’t help thinking her relentless compulsion to campaign can be a curse.

Towards the end of the film, we see her crouched in the cabin of the racing yacht taking her to New York. Huge waves crash past the windows behind her. Thunberg is in tears as she records her diary on a phone. She is missing her dogs, her home and her “routines”.

‘How dare you’

The climax comes with Thunberg’s “how dare you” speech, where she scolds world leaders for their lack of action.

“The eyes of all future generations are upon you,” she warns at the UN Climate Action summit in New York, “and if you fail us, I say we will never forgive you.”

It is an address that echoed around the world.

She later joins tens of thousands of protestors on the streets of New York – and millions more join climate strikes around the world.

It is a triumph for Thunberg and her campaigning, and a landmark in progress for action on climate change.

But you can’t help but feel anxious for her future. We have seen the meaning and purpose she has found in campaigning and wonder how she will fare now she is back at school.

The final scenes of the film show Thunberg with her beloved pony.

“I sometimes think it might be good if everyone had a little bit of Asperger’s,” she says as she grooms him, “…at least when it comes to the climate.”

I Am Greta is released in the UK and Ireland on 16 October 2020. Special screenings followed by a Q&A will take place on Sunday, 18 October.

Source: BBC

Greta Thunberg: Our house is still on fire and you’re fuelling the flames!

Posted on January 21, 2020August 12, 2020 by dishanth

Greta Thunberg addressed the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos.
She called for urgent action, stressing the need for ‘real zero’ emissions.
Thunberg had three immediate demands for Davos participants.

One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve done this before and I assure you it doesn’t lead to anything.

And for the record, when we children tell you to panic, we’re not telling you to go on like before.

We’re not telling you to rely on technologies that don’t even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will. We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching “net-zero emissions” or “carbon neutrality” by cheating and fiddling around with numbers.

We are not telling you to “offset your emissions” by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate.

Planting trees is good, of course, but it’s nowhere near enough of what needs to be done, and it cannot replace real mitigation or rewilding nature.

Let’s be clear. We don’t need a “low-carbon economy.” We don’t need to “lower emissions.” Our emissions have to stop to stay if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5 degrees target. And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus then we must forget about net zero — we need real zero.

Because distant net zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget — which applies for today, not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years, that remaining budget will soon be completely used up.

The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone, and it should.

But the fact that we’re all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least.

Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5-degree or well-below-2-degrees commitments of the Paris Agreement.

And again — this is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics.

From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, as well as the center, have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world. Because that world, in case you haven’t noticed, is currently on fire.

You say children shouldn’t worry. You say: “Just leave this to us. We will fix this, we promise we won’t let you down. Don’t be so pessimistic.”

And then — nothing. Silence. Or something worse than silence. Empty words and promises which give the impression that sufficient action is being taken.

All the solutions are obviously not available within today’s societies. Nor do we have the time to wait for new technological solutions to become available to start drastically reducing our emissions.

So, of course, the transition isn’t going to be easy. It will be hard. And unless we start facing this now together, with all cards on the table, we won’t be able to solve this in time.

In the days running up to the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum, I joined a group of climate activists who are demanding that you, the world’s most powerful and influential business and political leaders, begin to take the action needed.

We demand that at this year’s World Economic Forum participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:

Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.

Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.

And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.

We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now.

It may seem like we’re asking for a lot. And you will of course say that we are naïve. But this is just the very minimum amount of effort that is needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.

So either you do this or you’re going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5-degree target.

Giving up without even trying.

Well I’m here to tell you that unlike you, my generation will not give up without a fight.

The facts are clear, but they’re still too uncomfortable for you to address.

You just leave it because you think it’s too depressing and people will give up. But people will not give up. You’re the ones who are giving up.

Last week I met with coal miners in Poland who lost their jobs because their mine was closed. And even they had not given up. On the contrary, they seem to understand the fact that we need to change more than you do.

I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing the climate chaos you knowingly brought upon them? The 1.5-degree target? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?

Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.

Written by
Greta Thunberg, Climate and Environmental Activist,

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Davos 2020 will be carbon neutral: here’s how

Posted on January 14, 2020August 12, 2020 by dishanth

In January 2020, the World Economic Forum will call on companies to raise their ambitions for climate action at the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters under the theme “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.” The meeting’s 50th edition will bring together over 3,000 participants from around the world. For the fourth year, it will also be climate neutral.

So what exactly does being climate neutral mean?

For one thing, we do everything we can to reduce emissions in the first place. This involves looking at everything: from our use of materials and resources (this year, we are actually changing the configuration of the Congress Centre layout to use less carpet), to the food we serve (more local, seasonal and plant-based than ever before) and transportation (our fleet of cars and buses is 90% hybrid or electric this year).

We will keep on looking for ways to reduce our environmental footprint. For everything that we cannot eliminate, we offset by investing in schemes that reduce emissions levels in the atmosphere.

We have been calculating and offsetting all emissions to the Annual Meeting – including staff and participant air travel – by funding certified offsetting projects around the world since 2017. Beyond carbon emission reduction, these initiatives also create jobs and improved living conditions. For example, one of the projects selected to offset the 2018 meeting was Rwandan Boreholes, which has already provided 50 million litres of water to over 68,000 people and saved 85,000 tonnes of wood that would have been used to boil water for purification.

To offset the 2020 Annual Meeting, the Forum has decided to continue supporting two key projects: the Jacundá project in the Amazonian “Arc of Deforestation” known for its disappearing tropical forest, which protects an area of 95,000 hectares of native forest and sustainably produced rubber, açai and brazil nuts, and the Biogas for Greener Farms, which uses methane generated by the processing of manure in biogas digesters as energy and the residue as fertiliser for local farms in Switzerland.

Here are some other examples of offsetting projects supported by the Forum in collaboration with South Pole, a leading provider of global climate solutions.

Waste Composters

Although composting human waste, manure, or landfill is hardly new, reducing its carbon emissions is a more recent concern. Biogas digesters recycle the output of composting to have a twofold benefit: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enabling the production of green energy. Benefits include maintaining soil fertility and supporting food safety.

Composting New Dehli ensures that solid waste from fruit and vegetable markets in Delhi, India, doesn’t end up in landfills and transforms 73,000 tonnes of it into about 200 tonnes of compost every year. In Cambodia, the National Biodigester programme not only treats waste then used as fertilizer by over 18,000 farms but also replaces biomass stoves, saving 150,000 tonnes of wood since 2006.

Cook Stoves

Conventional stoves are inefficient and produce indoor smoke – the equivalent of burning 400 cigarettes per hour. Cook stoves, which have fewer fumes and require less energy and wood, provide health, energy and environmental benefits.

In India, where it’s estimated that toxic fumes from conventional cookstoves cause 500,000 premature deaths per year, The Breathing Space Cook Stove has already provided efficient cookstoves to over 200,000 families. In Mali, Katene Clean Cookstoves created 400 jobs in a local stove manufacturing factory and planted 2,400m2 of trees to counter desertification in a country that is more than half covered by the Sahara.

Communities gathering firewood in China’s Mamize Nature Reserve in Sichuan province threaten the surrounding biodiversity and the habitat of giant pandas, an issue the WWF Mamize Firewood-Saving Cook Stove Project has been working to address.

Small interventions on cooking stoves, such as improved ignition rates, can also benefit users financially – Highveld Air Quality – NFS project in South Africa, for example, saves users about $30 a year.

Hydro

Sustainable hydro plants are the most efficient way to generate electricity, but their cost is often a barrier to their construction. In Brazil, Incomex Hydro has set up three hydro plants, which produce clean energy and reduce over 83,000 tonnes of CO2 per year – that’s the equivalent of electricity use for 14,000 houses.

On a bigger scale, China’s Huóshui Grouped Small Hydropower has been supplying energy for over half a million rural Chinese homes every year and has supported the community with sustainable agricultural workshops for over 170 people, social initiative funding, and an educational programme about environment protection in which about 200 students have taken part.

Wind Power

Another renewable source of energy that can satisfy the world’s increasing demand is wind power. In Viet Nam, where economic growth and power demands are outpacing supplies, Bac Lieu Wind Farm set up the first large-scale coastal wind power project of the country.

In India, Mitcon wind plants have been supplying the national grid, creating employment, and supporting women entrepreneurs. Argentina’s economic difficulties from the early 2000s generated an energy crisis and an inability to meet power demands in sustainable ways. Today, Rawson windfarm works in Patagonia, one of the windiest regions of the world.

Reducing emissions remains the first priority of the Forum’s sustainability efforts for the Annual Meeting 2020, which form part of the boarder institutional sustainability strategy. Offsetting is used to neutralize the emissions that could not be avoided, in a way that fosters sustainable development in Switzerland and abroad.

Written by

Aylin Elci, Communications Officer, World Economic Forum Geneva

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

‘At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy’

Posted on January 13, 2020August 12, 2020 by dishanth

Young climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, will be attending Davos this year to put pressure on world leaders to end the fossil fuel economy.
In 2017 alone, the world spent $5.2 trillion subsidising fossil fuels.
“Anything less than immediately ceasing these investments in the fossil fuel industry would be a betrayal of life itself,” writes Greta.

This article originally appeared in The Guardian.

We have just entered a new decade, a decade where every month and every day will be absolutely crucial in deciding what the future will look like. Towards the end of January, chief executives, investors and policymakers will gather in Davos for the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum.

Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present to put pressure on these leaders.

We demand that at this year’s Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.

We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.

We understand and know very well that the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy. But the climate crisis is also extremely complicated, and this is an emergency. In an emergency you step out of your comfort zone and make decisions that may not be very comfortable or pleasant. And let’s be clear – there is nothing easy, comfortable or pleasant about the climate and environmental emergency.

Young people are being let down by older generations and those in power. To some it may seem like we are asking for a lot. But this is just the very minimum of effort needed to start the rapid sustainable transition. The fact that this still – in 2020 – hasn’t been done already is, quite frankly, a disgrace.

Yet, since the 2015 Paris agreement, 33 major global banks have collectively poured $1.9tn (£1.5tn) into fossil fuels, according to Rainforest Action’s report. The IMF concluded that in 2017 alone, the world spent $5.2tn subsidising fossil fuels. This has to stop.

The world of finance has a responsibility to the planet, the people and all other species living on it. In fact, it ought to be in every company and stakeholder’s interest to make sure the planet they live on will thrive. But history has not shown the corporate world’s willingness to hold themselves accountable. So it falls on us, the children, to do that. We call upon the world’s leaders to stop investing in the fossil fuel economy that is at the very heart of this planetary crisis. Instead, they should invest their money in existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature. Short-term profit should not trump long-term stability of life.

A coal fired power plant: ‘Since the 2015 Paris agreement 33 major global banks have poured £1.5tn into fossil fuels.’
Image: John Giles/PA

The theme of this year’s gathering in Davos is “stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world”. According to the Forum’s website, leaders will meet to discuss ideas and improve our global progress on climate change. Our request to them is perhaps not so far-fetched considering that they say they understand and prioritise this emergency. Anything less than immediately ceasing these investments in the fossil fuel industry would be a betrayal of life itself. Today’s business as usual is turning into a crime against humanity. We demand that leaders play their part in putting an end to this madness. Our future is at stake, let that be their investment.

• Greta Thunberg is a 17-year-old environmental campaigner from Stockholm, Sweden. This article was co-written with youth climate activists Jean Hinchliffe, Australia; Danielle Ferreira de Assis, Brazil; Joel Enrique Peña Panichine, Chile; Robin Jullian, France; Luisa Neubauer, Germany; Licipriya Kangujam, India; David Wicker, Italy; Julia Haddad, Lebanon; Oladosu Adenike, Nigeria; Iqbal Badruddin, Pakistan; Arshak Makichyan, Russia; Holly Gillibrand, Scotland; Alejandro Martínez, Spain; Isabelle Axelsson, Sweden; Sophia Axelsson, Sweden; Ell Jarl, Sweden; Mina Pohankova, Sweden; Linus Dolder, Switzerland; Vanessa Nakate, Uganda; Tokata Iron Eyes, USA

Written by

Greta Thunberg, Climate and Environmental Activist,

This article is published in collaboration with The Guardian.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.