Why Greta Thunberg Sparks Screaming Rage Among Wingnuts And Climate Deniers

[hatrack]

Climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg has built his global brand on keeping his cool. “Cool it,” his best-selling book told those worried about the warming planet. For some reason, however, he seems to have difficulty sticking to the blasé tone when it comes to a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden. Throughout the summer, Lomborg has sent out half a dozen tweets mocking or criticizing Greta Thunberg, the prominent young activist who has been sailing across the Atlantic to attend the UN’s Youth Climate Summit and other meetings in the U.S. “Just when you thought climate alarmism at least couldn’t go higher than 11, you see someone who’s found 111,” Lomborg wrote in a recent tweet. “Of course, she should be treated respectfully,” he later added. Most of Greta Thunberg’s critics did not seem to care much for the caveat.

As Thunberg approached America, she was followed by a tsunami of male rage. On her first day of sailing, a multi-millionaire Brexit activist tweeted that he wished a freak accident would destroy her boat. A conservative Australian columnist called her a “deeply disturbed messiah of the global warming movement,” while the British far-right activist David Vance attacked the “sheer petulance of this arrogant child.”

In the U.S., former Trump staffer Steve Milloy recently called Thunberg a “teenage puppet,” and claimed that “the world laughs at this Greta charade,” while a widely shared far-right meme showed Trump tipping The Statue of Liberty to crush her boat. We can expect a surge of similar attacks in the U.S. as she arrives in New York this week.

While these examples might feel like mere coincidence to some, the idea that white men would lead the attacks on Greta Thunberg is consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries to climate-denialism—some of the research coming from Thunberg’s own country. Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, which recently launched the world’s first academic research center to study climate denialism, have for years been examining a link between climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right.

EDIT

https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers

[Thekaspervote]

1. She's the David Hogg voice of climate change

[bronxiteforever]

2. Kick and recommend. I never thought about the connection between

Climate change denial and misogyny until I read this piece. Thanks for posting, learned something new.

[texasfiddler]

3. This white male middle aged Christian Texan

Loves her! She is a true warrior for future generations!

[mr_lebowski]

4. Same with this white male middle aged atheist Californian! GO GRETA! nt

[Skittles]

5. any woman who speaks out about anything is targeted

I don't know why the subject of climate change would be any different

[progree]

6. Maybe they are afraid more people will hear her speeches like this:

Full 12 minute version:

Shortened (4 minute) version:

[FiveGoodMen]

7. I think it's the same reason that Holy Water burns vampires.