Greta abandoned her faith that shaming leaders into action would work

Evidence

Then she spoke a lot, to all kinds of audiences, and you could tell by the care she put into those speeches that a part of her believed they might yield action. What was interesting about the version of Greta that showed up in Glasgow is that she had clearly lost that earlier faith—lost faith in the spectacle of herself giving speeches to shame leaders for doing nothing. So she started making speeches that were less about climate change and more about the absurdity of the whole charade. “Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah, blah, blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah,” she said in the run-up to the summit. “This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words, words that sound great but so far has led to no action. Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.” Asked by the BBC two days later what she thought of the final agreement to come out of Glasgow, Greta replied, “They even succeeded in watering down the blah, blah, blah, which is quite an achievement.” … This is far more scathing than what Greta used to do at such esteemed gatherings. She used to scold. She used to plead. She used to cry. And though she was harsh to the leaders listening to her, her words still implied a kind of faith in them. But it would seem that Greta no longer believes in that theory of change. She has come to the place at which so many of us have arrived: the realization that no one is coming to save us but us, and whatever action we can leverage through our cooperation, organization, and solidarities. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 499

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘blah, blah, blah’ speech as punctuation point in the collapse of climate summit theater — an essay angle on how performative summitry is losing credibility with its own audience.