Devil’s Advocate: Serving you a cocktail of wit, humour and sarcasm
I choked on the samosa I was eating, as I read the newspaper headline on my iPad. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So, I rubbed them and read it again. It still read the same. I poured the hot coffee over my head to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and read one more time, with the hot coffee trickling down my face. No change at all. The headline still read, “Greta Thunberg detained after protesting against wind farm in Norway”. How was this possible? Greta fighting against the very source of renewable energy she had said would save the planet. I’m assuming that you are as perplexed as I am at this.
Everyone on the planet knows who Greta Thunberg is. The only people who don’t know her are the babies who were born yesterday, people who have just risen from the dead and people suffering with dementia. Greta is the girl-child who had to drop out of school, to stop the earth from the brink of extinction, due to human-caused climate change, which includes you and me. With her “How dare you?” speeches, she knocked sense into the heads of us grown up adults and brought us in line. She narrowly missed getting the Nobel prize and being canonised by the Pope as a saint.
Continuing with the news story, “Ms Thunberg took part in the demonstration against the two wind farms which are built on reindeer pastures the indigenous Sami community use for herding. The reindeer is a prized animal that has long provided them with food, clothing, and labour. While the turbines bolster Norway’s green ambitions by powering thousands of homes, they do so at a cost of disrupting the daily life of the Sami people and frightening the animals they rely on for their livelihood.”
Shocking! Looks like adult Greta’s priorities in life have changed from saving the planet to saving humans and their animals first; the very humans who are causing climate change and their reindeer farts which are killing the planet. What a dramatic transition in values, from a child to an adult!
But the more disappointing news is that, even though Greta is witnessing all her ten commandments, especially the first and second ones, being wrecked to pieces right under her nose, there is not a single squeak from her. Let me explain.
Greta’s first commandment, “Thou shalt not fly” and her second commandment, “Thou shalt listen to scientists, David Attenborough and Al Gore” have been shattered to pieces.
Flying causes climate change. This has been proven beyond doubt by the scientists. In a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, Klöwer and his colleagues have said, “Aviation industry contributes around 4% to human-induced global warming. If aviation were a country, it would be the world’s sixth-biggest emitter, after China, the US, India, Russia, and Japan”.
Every time I fly, I feel so guilty that when I return from the trip, I always plant a few saplings in my backyard to erase the effects of my huge flying carbon footprint. I now need a bigger backyard.
Al Gore, the Nobel prize winning environmentalist, has predicted the end of the planet many times over, due to climate change, but thankfully his Nostradamus-like prophesies have not come to pass. But he is right. He can probably see the ocean level rising when he looks out from the balcony of his ocean-front villa he lives in, champagne glass in hand. David Attenborough, the serial documentary maker, has flown around the world, at least a million times, showing us how bad the shape the earth is, not realizing that he probably initiated climate change by flying too much. Both, David & Al, belong to Greta’s fan club.
Greta has always been against flying. Greta had not only talked the walk but walked the talk too. She had shown the world how travel can be done without flying, by sailing in her expensive yacht to the UN conference to deliver her famous, “How dare you?” castigation. If the rest of the world is not able to afford expensive yachts, that is not Greta’s problem.
Air India recently placed a huge order on Airbus and Boeing to buy about 470 monster airplanes, the biggest single order in the history of aviation industry, with more planes to be added on to it. Close on the heels, Indigo has a mix of about 500 large and small airplanes on back order along with Akasa Air looking forward to the delivery of 72 aircrafts. Looks like there will be traffic congestion in the Indian airspace to rival its traffic congestion on its roads!
Despite the impending increase in climate change effects because of these new planes polluting the skies, Greta is silent as a church mouse on the subject. Also, imagine the amount of mining which needs to be done to manufacture these planes, adding to climate change woes. The silence on the matter, from the same child-Greta who had chided the PM of India, Narendra Modi, on the farmers’ protest incident, is deafening.
Ever since Greta has become an adult, her influence on the world stage appears to be waning. She has failed to stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict, among other things.
The world urgently needs another child leader, preferably one who has finished school, this time.
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I choked on the samosa I was eating, as I read the newspaper headline. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The headline still read, “#GretaThunberg detained after protesting against wind farm in Norway”. How was this possible? 🌬 #TheIndianSun @BhushanSalunke1 https://t.co/vif6yQAoCP
— The Indian Sun (@The_Indian_Sun) March 5, 2023
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