Greta Thunberg is the antidote to Donald Trump

The pure spirit of Greta Thunberg is the perfect antidote to Donald Trump

She is the opposite to Donald Trump. He is 73 and devotes considerable attn. to his vanity. The workers at his golf resorts have revealed how he wears makeup & has to have fresh shirts brought to him often bc he gets bronzer on the collar. He has this unnatural skin colour with a white ring around his eyes probably bc he tans in tanning beds and wears goggles. He bleaches his hair & brows, and does this elaborate comb over. He wears suits to look impressive even at casual events like baseball games. Greta is 16. She has more important things to do with her time than preen, so she keeps her face clean of makeup, wears her hair in a simple braid. Has met President Obama, PM Justin Trudeau, and spoken before the UN dressed simply, again with no makeup, no hair style.

He has frequent outbursts on Twitter. He wrote more than 100 Tweets in 1 day. But adults like to tsk tsk teens & say we're the ones who spend too much time on social media. He sulked away from the NATO Summit after world leaders low-key mocked him for the spectacles he's made, returning early to the US where he's in the process of being impeached by the House. He aggressively publicly mocked her & she didn't give him the satisfaction of writing a tweet or making a comment in response. She gave him all of like half a minute of her time, just changing her Twitter bio to troll him back brilliantly & efficiently. Then she returned her focus to what matters. Not pettiness on Twitter.

On Wednesday, Time named Thunberg the magazine’s Person of the Year. Donald Trump, who is famously obsessed with being on the cover of Time, could not stand it. He has campaigned on fossil-fuel expansion, has betrayed on numerous occasions that he does not understand what climate change is, and, on November 4th, he officially began proceedings to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. (Every other country in the world remains a signatory to the pact.) On Thursday, in response to Thunberg’s news, he tweeted: “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!” Thunberg, as always, took the President’s mockery in stride, changing her Twitter bio, minutes later, to “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

This is not the first time that Thunberg has one-upped Trump’s mocking tweets. In September, she gave a historic speech with the kind of rhetorical vigor that exemplifies her gifts as an orator. “This is all wrong,” she said. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” Later, Trump retweeted a video clip of her remarks, adding, “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” The same day, Thunberg put the exact words in her Twitter bio: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

Thunberg is Trump’s perfect foil. She is pure spirit, committed to the foremost emergency of our time, to the science behind it, and to the people who are working every day to rapidly change our energy systems and consumption patterns so that we avert climate change’s deadliest impacts and destabilizing tipping points. Thunberg is devoted to learning, writing, and understanding the world around her. She constantly lifts up other young climate leaders—especially those from indigenous and frontline communities—and begs reporters to focus on them, not her. (On Monday, she and Germany’s most prominent youth activist, Luisa Neubauer, hosted a press conference with young leaders from the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Russia, and Uganda.) She is a gifted public speaker, not because she stirs up chaos and hate through incoherent rants, but because she speaks elegantly and intelligently, in logical, pithy, unmuddied sentences. Her rhetorical gifts are, perhaps, all the more remarkable considering that, when she was younger, she fell into a major depression concerning climate change and stopped speaking altogether for months. As she said at the start of her speech on Tuesday, “A year and a half ago, I didn’t speak to anyone unless I really had to. But then I found a reason to speak.”

Click to expand...

"Seeking an echo chamber and affirmation only?"

"One doesn't need to be underage to support her message."

There's literally hundreds of bars in the United States that you can go into to discuss this or whatever else you want. The ppl here I tagged cannot go into any of them.

There's a whole section that is just for Christians on this forum & there's threads there about Greta Thunberg that one of the girls I tagged cannot post in. But you're not going to see her complaining about that bc she's too mature.

With the ppl here who are under 21, there's 4 nationalities represented, and different political POVs. I know they're busy but I think they will post when they can.

Getting whiplash bc of how rapidly some Trump supporters have switched positions, one week soapboxing and ranting about how a poor vulnerable teenager was victimized bc a law professor made a pun about his name that flew over their heads. This week they're saying someone in his same age range isn't any more vulnerable bc of her age.

Whatever. Greta Thunberg isn't having meltdowns on Twitter about it, or photoshopping her head on Donald Trump's body, which is as pathetic as it is creepy. She also didn't photoshop her head onto the body of Thanos, the mass murdering Marvel villain. It was Donald Trump who did that.

If you're 73 and you decide to become a politician, then be prepared to not only be criticized but also don't be shocked if it's very aggressive / not polite. Just because a president is elderly doesn't necessarily make him more vulnerable. The worst Donald Trump can be accused of is failing to honour the oath of office for the Presidency & acting in a way beneath that office constantly. Such as by expending time and energy being salty bc a teenage girl got picked to be the Person of the Year and he's just a runner up. Or writing more tweets in a week than the avg teen does in a month, all full of vinegar & self-victimization bc he's being held accountable for his actions.

Donald Trump punches himself more than he punches anybody else.

@Zoii @Stanfordella @David Neos tagging so you'll see this

Go Braves is already here.

I appreciate the interest from older ppl but I've posted in - several threads outside of this thread that are about Greta Thunberg so they can ask me q's there. Obv. if I only wanted to stay in an echo chamber I wouldn't post in those threads.

This is the ONE thread for ppl who are in the same gen as her to talk about her. I wish that would just be respected.

I already provided a link to the older person posting here despite having been politely requested not to bc this is the 1 section on the entire forum where peers of Greta Thunberg can discuss her. But here's another one:
Why Greta Thunberg is a prophetic voice for our time

I'm scrubbing out the posts that did not belong here will address why Christians should care for the environment.

This is another good source:

REASONS TO CARE
The Bible gives three main reasons why we should care for the environment. First, God Himself says that His creation is very good. The material world matters to God; He sustains it all the time. Without Him it would fall apart into chaos. "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1.16–17). So if we neglect, abuse and spoil the environment, we are damaging something that is precious to God.

The second and even more important reason why we should care for the environment is that in Genesis 1.28 and 2.15, God specifically commanded humankind to do so. He told us to take care of both the living and the non-living creation. We are to work at ruling and ordering creation as good stewards without abusing it for our own selfish ends. By caring for the earth properly, we enable it to be fruitful and to play its intended role in giving glory to God. That is part of our proper worship of God.

The very existence of the universe is the result of God's creative activity
The third reason is that one day the cosmos will be renewed and re-created as the "new heavens and new earth", to which both the Old and New Testaments look forward (Isaiah 65, Revelation 21). That will bring the fullness of life that God intended and purposed for His creation: a place where people will truly be at home, where God will dwell with His people, and both they and the whole of creation will worship Him and give Him glory.

So how we treat the environment now ought to be a preview – a practice run if you like – of what we will do in the new creation. The certain hope of a renewed future creation is not a licence to abandon care for this one. Rather, the opposite is the case: there is every incentive to foster and to use the innate goodness and fruitfulness of this material world to do what is pleasing to God in our time and place. As Luther is supposed to have remarked, "If I knew Jesus would return tomorrow, I would plant a tree today."

PRACTICAL THINGS
It is increasingly clear that our use of oil and gas in the West is driving rapid climate change in the whole world. It may not have much effect on us in the short term, other than maybe giving us longer and hotter summers in the UK, but the effects of more extreme weather events will fall disproportionately on the very young and very old, on the poor and the marginalised in places such as sub-Saharan Africa.

One quarter of the planet's population lives in poverty and is extremely vulnerable to changes caused by drought or flooding, to the failure of agricultural crops or to rising sea levels. If we take caring for our global neighbour seriously, we need to consider the impact of our lifestyles on them.

Many of the practical things we can do are not difficult, and indeed are often personally beneficial. Walking to school or church is usually healthier than driving. Changing to low-energy light bulbs, switching the TV off stand-by and insulating our homes will all save us money. So why are they difficult for us?

Partly it is because we are prone to put to the back of our minds the impact of our actions on those we can't see, such as those in another part of the world or even future generations. But perhaps mainly it is because we are by nature sinful, self-centred in our thoughts and our actions.

Those of us who live in the high-income nations with standards of living purchased through profligate use of natural resources have a particular responsibility in our stewardship: an imperative to care for those elsewhere in the world marginalised by global climate change. Our decision to drive a big car, to fly to Paris for the weekend or to turn up the heating rather than put on a sweater will have a direct impact on someone already living on the edge. Once we are aware of that, how can we ignore it?

Of course Christians will want to do all they can to tell others the Good News of Christ. But woe betide us if in telling that Good News we don't also model it by caring for the world God has entrusted to us.

I believe it's extremely hypocritical for Christians to say we believe God created the world & then not take accountability with protecting the world God created.