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Readers of the Times try to help Greta out The problem:
Greta Thunberg stranded as climate summit moves from Chile to Spain
In the centuries before powered flight, getting from California to Madrid was an arduous business, necessitating a long yomp over the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, and then a turbulent sea voyage across the Atlantic.
Greta Thunberg has 28 days.
The teenage climate activist and pioneer of “flight shame” has appealed for help to travel from Los Angeles to a UN climate summit in Spain without releasing so much as a wisp of unnecessary carbon dioxide.
In perhaps the sternest test of her convictions yet, she must complete the journey of at least 6,000 miles by rail, sail or electric car before December 2.
The solutions:
Richard77:
Perhaps she should consider using Skype.
Ian Howlett:
Just find a normal scheduled flight with an empty seat and get on. The plane will be leaving anyway, whether you’re on it or not.
Anthony Morris:
If it wasn’t so far she could just walk on the water .
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So, she hitched a ride on a sailboat to virtue signal at the UN with no plan to get back? That was well thought out. I suppose she could try to find another sailboat going her way, but crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat in November? What could go wrong with that?
Winner.
Surely a liquid hydrogen powered rocket is OK? Output water. Anyone got some old V2s handy? With a bit of reworking for the fuels used, she could be in or near the Azores with a reusable parachute she might make it there in two hops, and then sail to Iberia.
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If her goal is to avoid releasing a wisp of unnecessary carbon dioxide, she needs to immediately hold her breath. To make sure she doesn’t go back on her commitment to never release unnecessary carbon dioxide, she should insert her head in a plastic bag and then duct-tape it around her neck.
Ken, a PLASTIC bag? What were you thinking? Plastic is the source of all evil!!!
Surely she can just close her eyes tightly and wish it were so, demand it be so, rail on those who would doubt it could be so. Isn’t that the basis of most extreme lefty policies?
No, Fraser. Not that simple. She has no ruby slippers.
Although I should think those Winged Monkeys would be glad to carry her back.
Hot air balloon. Oh so precious Greta spouts enough vacuous gas to keep one flying forever.
Trebuchet.
As far as I can see, she is beautifully demonstrating the way that greens are detached from reality. Imagine the chaos if everyone started pratting around like this. Not that ordinary people can afford to of course but then they don’t really matter do they?
As I recall, she was planning on flying to Spain. Unfortunately, that got too much publicity and the cries of “Hypocrite” got too loud to ignore. It will be interesting to see how this stalemate is resolved.
I wish all of the 40,000 participants in the annual climate conferences would limit themselves to travel in sail boats, and give up their private jets – permanently. Kudos to Greta.
They should also give up meat eating (or any other eating…), and sell their multiple 20 bedroom MacMansions…
Maybe she will find no travel answer, and then discover that the world carries on regardless of her involvement.
Most teenagers make a similar discovery, as they sulk in their rooms.
This is the thing, if they actually lived up to their zero carbon bullshit they would all be dead in a matter of months. It needs a quite spectacular level of ignorance for this not to be completely obvious.
Elsewhere some one linked to a Guardian article from 2004 about prognostications from scientists at the Pentagon being ignored by evil denier President Bush. Basically, by 2020 Sea level rises are going to swamp any low lying areas completely, the whole world will be a war zone due to food shortages and Britain is going to be like Siberia.
I wish a regulation be adopted that requires all climate activists and all UN personnel in general, to travel only by zero emission means – that is by sailboats on the seas and by horse and carriage on land.
That would include Jane Fonda, Al Gore, Thomas Friedman etc., etc., as well as, of course, all Dem candidates for the Presidency.
I think Greta is doing a wonderful job – of exposing the utter phoniness of other warmies. She, and she only, is taking this garbage idea seriously, instead of just getting on a private jet, buying a ‘carbon offset’ and enjoying holidays in Bali, Cancun, Spain and the other places they stage these pleasant junkets that we pay for, rendered still more pleasant by the press adulation and feeling of virtue that attending gives. Since her boat crew replacements took a plane across the Atlantic and etc., the degree to which she acts as if she really believes is limited, but it still far outdistances the vast majority of global warmenists, who talk as if they believed in it but act as if they don’t.
Obviously, one would need to be a 16-year-old with mental issues to fall so completely for this bilge, but those facts are also her excuse.
Since I mentioned this I thought that it would be polite to go and find it and post the link.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
What is really funny is, because it is a climate related story, it comes with a side order of more up to date ludicrous scare stories. These alongside an old story about what is supposed to be happening now but isn’t. Genius.
I note the picture in the Times article also includes an “actor” – i.e. a person who gets paid for pretending and having their ego stroked. Surely another luvvie “actor” like Emma Thompson could take her as First Class Baggage?
By the way, I met St.Greta’s boat support crew in Plymouth before the start of the publicity stunt. They had (understandly) not travelled First Class to Plymouth like St.Greta, they had had to drive all the way across France from the boat’s home base in Monaco. In a nasty polluting diesel van with all the equipment.
It’s a good job Virtue Signalling doesn’t apply to the servants!
Unless this (allegedly) domestically abused autistic child, and her parents, walk everywhere, in shoes made from grass, I refuse to accept anything they say.
I don’t know the comparison of carbon footprint per passenger mile between planes and trains, but there’s the Westward route, Amtrak to Nome, Nome to Siberia by boat, Local transit (dogsled?) to Yakutsk, Trans Siberian RR to Eastern Europe, then Euro trains to Spain. Should be very scenic. As a plus, it traces the reverse of the expansion of Homo Sapiens across the world.
New religion in the offing! “If Saint Greta can’t go to Madrid, then send Madrid to Saint Greta!”
– And she must go – or Madrid must – we may be only one more adolescent temper-tantrum away from irreversible climate catastrophe!
Why did they not sail in the boat??
Or is this the 2nd shift, the crew that flew across the Atlantic to man the boat for the return trip?
That noted ruler of a leading hydrocarbon exporter, Mr Putin, has some observations on Greta that make him seem like that rare thing in politics, a sensible adult.
And Mr Johnson bans fracking.
Surely she must be able to afford the £50 “carbon offset”. aren’t her parents loaded with cash, if not I’m sure Elton would chip in, it can only be a few stalks from his flower budget ?
The other solution is simply to not go, I mean, I’m not going and the Earth is much better for it. In fact she should make a stand and demand if she can’t go then no-one goes at all and suggest the Climate Summit be cancelled – imagine the globs of carbon not spewed out if that were to happen ?
Why does Greta T. not go to CHINA – and protest there? After all that is where most of the C02 emissions are.
The answer is simple – the people who really control this movement (the people who actually control young Greta) do not give a Tinker’s curse about C02 emissions (they could not care less – otherwise they would be pro nuclear power) they just want to hurt the West as much as they can.
It is standard leftism – allied (in the normal horrible way) with certain elements in Big Business who both want to look “Woke” and think they can personally profit from harming everyone else with regulations and taxes.
Since more CO2 in the air is entirely beneficial, and reassuring, why on earth would anyone want to reduce their so-called ‘carbon footprint’? Actually, I see now that the preceding comment has answered this question already.
Why does Greta T. not go to CHINA – and protest there? After all that is where most of the C02 emissions are.
China is already a communist country.
A modest proposal…
Set up a reservation for Greens. People would pay good money for a safari of the C13th. Greta and Jonny Porritt could be queen and king.
As well as the tours for a larger fee we could sell hunting permits. That would keep their population under control which is a big Green goal. So everyone is a winner!
NickM,
Quite, and what the Greens want is for us to regress to the 13th Century, or earlier, but I think that they would oppose a lot of Roman technology and capital. So, if they get too powerful, either we do it to them, or they do put us on the reserve.
As for hunting, if they are in charge and we are the hunted, gut-strung bows and flint-headed arrows only I presume would be allowed?
If young MIss Thurnberg overstays her visa in the US, presumably she will face the full force of the law and a compulsory flight home?
“presumably she will face the full force of the law and a compulsory flight home?”
One could always take her to the furthest-east point of land in the contiguous United States, sternly point east and then chuck her in the Atlantic. Hopefully she’d:
1) have friends waiting just offshore (in oar- or sail-powered boats) to rescue her.
2) take a hint.
Why not charter one of the excellent sail-training ships? Do it properly, eschew the Panama Canal and transit Cape Horn, then a straight run up the South and North Atlantics to Spain. Of course she’d have to crew and I’m not at all sure that anyone would want to risk one these beautiful ships on such a stunt…..or that it could be completed in time, even in one could be procured.
Other than that, she, or her minders, could approach the BBC to pay for the train journeys mentioned above, and film the whole thing for an oh so virtuous 7 hour programme on the sacrifice of St Greta. Maybe Michael Portillo could be persuaded to accompany her? I suspect not, though.