How can I be like Greta?
Dear Dale:
I’m a 10 year old girl. I want to be like Greta. She’s so smart and cool. How can I save the environment?
Signed,
Girl power
Dear GP:
You can’t. We’re fucked, totally fucked and there’s absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do about it: pollution, plastics, over-population, species extinction, deforestation, global warming and ocean acidification… you really think not going to school is going to solve any of that?
And yet, you kids keep trying. Like that time my family made me go to a kids’ science fair, just because my egghead nephew had something in it.
(That was back when they were still speaking to me.)
I thought it would be terrible. Such events usually are. But, because it’s by kids, you have to pretend to like it, even if it is total shit, which it usually is.
But it wasn’t. It was surprisingly good.
Okay sure, a lot of it was the usual crap about recycling.
(Like that’ll do any good: recycling is like slowing down from ninety to eighty-five while heading straight for a cliff.)
But some of it was pretty cool. One kid had a sunlamp and a magnifying glass, which he used to demonstrate the power of solar energy by frying insects.
(Some things never change.)
Another had an old Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, which she found in her grampa’s basement and used to measure radiation.
(Believe it or not, the uranium was still good: that stuff lasts forever.)
Of course, everyone in my family thought my nephew’s exhibit was the best: a machine that feeds farts to bacteria and turns them into protein.
(Not sure I’d want to eat that.)
All in all, the ingenuity was pretty impressive.
(So different from my day when all we did was make hash pipes.)
But the more I thought about it, the more it bummed me out. What is this obsession with the sustainability? Do people really want a future?
(I sure don’t. The present is horrible enough.)
And why dragoon kids into it? Shouldn’t they be outside playing sports and bullying weaker kids? Why force them to face up to the horrors of adult life at such an early age? You know there is something seriously wrong with the educational system when ten-year-olds are working on cold fusion.
Personally, I blame that Swedish girl. For putting hope in your heads, letting you think you matter and that, by acting up, you can bully us into behaving.
Good luck with that. Because, much as we may applaud Greta and even give her the Nobel prize, we’re going to go on having barbeques and driving SUVs till the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
(Always thought it’d be nuclear war that does us in. Turns out our real enemy is our love of luxury: cooked food, electric light and not freezing to death.)
So forget all this nonsense about saving the world. Stay in school instead. You’ll be glad you did. Because there’s so much you haven’t done yet. Cut classes. Sneak a smoke in the can. Shake down smaller students for their lunch money or spread vicious rumours about a girl you don’t like. Get drunk, throw up all over yourself and lose your virginity to a boy you hardly know.
All those precious adolescent experiences… don’t throw them away for the sake of a pointless protest. Because nothing you do will make any difference: not only are we not slowing down, we’re speeding up, heading for that cliff like a pair of drunks playing chicken and you’re the baby in the back.
Is what we’re doing irresponsible? Sure. But the truth is, like all bad parents, we don’t care. And neither should you. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
