Greta Thunberg: Nobody Heard You. No-one cares.

Thomas Schneider
3 min readSep 24, 2019

--

Greta Thunberg. What a beautiful speech. I had tears in my eyes. But nobody heard it.

Unfortunately, like with guns, nothing will change in America. And Canada isnt much better. The oil bosses are laughing at her right now, the industrialists didn’t bother watching her clip, and the billionaires are too busy worrying about their next rocket launch. Unless the government forces Wall Street into adopting a “social or environmental impact” measurement into their financial model. Nothing will change. Capitalism is built on exploitation. We will run the planet into the ground and the billionaires will have rocket ships waiting to take us to the next planet — at a handsomely profitable fee of course.

In my 10 years in renewable energy, I developed 3000 MW of wind and solar farms, billions of CO2 avoided — and my industry was destroyed (including my livelihood and 120 employees) by every single level of government — Canada, USA, Germany, UK, including both liberal and conservative governments, Repuclican and Democrat. Because none of you want to pay the true cost of electricity which is certainly NOT $0.05 per kilowatt hour but is actually closer to $0.18 per kilowatt hour. But none of you want to pay for it! “Save the planet, but don’t bill me. Thanks!” You “the people” are the true cause.

Turn off your lights, stop driving your car, don’t buy anything plastic, stop creating garbage, start growing your own vegetables, dont buy bottled water, stop eating meat and stop going on cruises, eco-vacations and flying to far away places. Then, only then, will you have a fantastic impact on this planet.

And lets talk about travel and these so called “eco-friendly” tours. What a great marketing ploy. Why do you need to go to Galapagos or the Antarctic or the Rain Forest, trampling on stuff and leaving your garbage? Stay away. You do NOT need to be there. Your visit contributes absolutely nothing, not even your eco volunteerism marketed shore excursion peddled by your cruise line.

I mean amazing of 16 year old Greta Thunberg, crossing the ocean on a solar powered sail boat. Talk about living by your principles. But somebody needs to tell her about how carbon fiber boats are built.

And while you are at it, get rid of your smartphone cause (a) it was obviously built by slave labor, (b) shipped on massively polluting ships and (c) the phone itself is responsible for 79 kilograms of CO2 emissions, about the same as burning through 8.9 gallons of gasoline, or driving your 2017 Prius for 500 miles (745 km).

I’m sure that would go down real well in your household, particularly with your kids. 🤷‍♂️

Who’s ready to do all that???

….exactly. That’s what I thought.

There you have it.

quod erat demonstrandum.

Q.E.D.

PS: full disclosure, I run a travel agency. But ALL our clients have to pay to offset their trips CO2 emissions. It’s non-negotiable. Or we ask them to plant a tree for every vacation they go on — we even provide the seedling. And yes, I would love to go to Antarctica, but I haven’t for exactly the reason that I personally don’t want to have “any impact whatsoever” on that continent. I enjoyed watching the BBC Planet Earth and Planet Earth II documentary very much though.

--

--

Thomas Schneider

Proven Public CEO with an IPO and two exits under his belt.