Some climate change hawks are questioning whether the brand of outraged activism trademarked by new Time “Person of the Year” Greta Thunberg will prove effective in inspiring policy to curb emissions.
“I’m not sure that Time magazine elevating her further is helpful in achieving our shared goal of mitigating the most harmful effects of climate change,” said Shane Skelton, who runs the consulting group S2C Pacific.
“I admire her passion and the lengths she’s gone to in promoting what is a very important cause,” said Skelton, a former energy and climate policy aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan. But he questioned whether Thunberg’s activism has produced “real-world impact.”
If the point of activism is to generate attention to a cause, no one can deny Thunberg’s effectiveness, climate hawks say.
However, “translating moral outrage into policy and engineering is a long and uneven process,” said Joseph Majkut, a climate scientist at the right-leaning Niskanen Center.
“I don’t have any qualms with Greta’s place in the climate debate,” Majkut said. “She doesn’t mince words when she calls inaction on climate change a moral outrage. As for her influence on climate action, the jury is out.”
Thunberg, the youngest person Time has picked for the yearly honor, acknowledged the relative lack of policy changes Wednesday morning, when she slammed world leaders at the United Nations climate conference in Madrid.
“Finding holistic solutions is what [this] should be all about,” she said. “But instead, it seems to have turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition.”
“The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like real action is happening when, in fact, almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR,” Thunberg said.
Indeed, a U.N. report last month found greenhouse gas emissions need to fall 7.6% a year across the world to reach the most ambitious pledge of the Paris agreement limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
However, little progress is being made at the U.N. talks, during which countries are supposed to hammer out the remaining rules to implement the Paris climate agreement and to commit to even greater emissions reductions.
Countries are especially struggling with weaning off fossil fuels, the chief contributor to global warming that power economies worldwide.
Global carbon emissions reached a record high this year, even as the pace of emissions increases is slowing and renewable energy growth soars, according to data released this month.
“So far, [Thunberg] has helped intensify the climate debate, but that has not had any consequential impact on policy,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.
This lack of progress has provoked Thunberg and other young activists, such as those in the Sunrise Movement, a progressive group pushing for the Green New Deal in the U.S. Such activists are calling for wholesale government intervention to reorganize the economy.
“Her brand of politics, defined principally by well-founded outrage, is still tenuously connected to the task at hand: the decades-long process of innovation and transition of energy and agricultural technologies to low-carbon alternatives,” said Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, a global research center that promotes technological solutions to climate change and other environmental challenges.
Thunberg is best known for founding an international movement called “Fridays for Future,” in which students skip school on Fridays to participate in demonstrations demanding action to combat climate change.
She also sailed in an emissions-free solar-powered boat across the Atlantic Ocean this year to New York City to lead more protests at another U.N. climate summit.
“Greta has had an enormous impact on the climate conversation,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “She has helped rally millions of people around the world and made the climate crisis a top issue this year.”
Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who advocates for a federal carbon tax, said Thunberg’s tactics have forced a worldwide conversation about an issue that has long been overshadowed.
“People are moved more by her passion and her sincerity and less by the details of her message,” he said.
Others said it’s up to voters to hold policymakers accountable and are eager to see if aggressive youth activism personified by Thunberg will make a difference at the ballot box.
“Unless those inspired by Greta’s passionate advocacy turn out and vote in large numbers in 2020 and beyond, I fear that her calls will continue to fall on deaf ears,” said Josh Busby, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas-Austin who writes about climate governance. “Still, a mass movement of people engaged on climate is a step forward in taking this issue out of the technocratic, scientific realm which ultimately isn’t sufficient to generate political will.”
