Teen Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg gave it to world leaders this week, and good on her.
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Greta blew into New York aboard a zero emissions super yacht to condemn global fixation on the fairytale of perpetual economic growth while millions suffer due to inaction on climate change. Brink of mass extinction, stolen dreams, childhoods destroyed. How dare you! (Rough quote.)
Right wing commentators and trolls took aim at her impassioned female fury and side plait, but little was said about saving the planet, which was a shame.
It may not be as impossible as some vested interests make it sound. Few thought the horse could be replaced at the turn of the 20th century. No one saw the demise of the Sony Walkman in the 1980s and burning fossil fuels may one day seem as archaic as electing Donald Trump US president.
Predictably he mocked her Tweeting: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future!" This showed he was at least taking her seriously. And perhaps other politicians should too as millions around the world wagged school to protest. One day those kids will vote, and as certain as climate change is not just hot air (it's just a symptom), people are warming to change. Possibly their elected officials.
But what to do about an issue enslaving the world, and how to add up the cost?
Slavery itself was for centuries considered acceptable and the idea of getting rid of it ludicrous. Enormous empire were established on the back of slavery and Britain led the way before doing a giant turnabout to become the world's leading anti-slave activist by the late 18th century.
Guys like William Wilberforce from the Anti-Slavery Society would have seemed distinctly Thunberg-esque to polite society of the day, enriched by the sufferings of millions, as they were, stealing childhoods and destroying dreams with their fixation on fairytales of perpetual economic growth. How dare they.
But the "insane" idea of abolishing slavery gradually took hold and by 1833 Britain's Parliament made it so throughout most of the empire, in theory, if not in practice. Burning fossil fuels may eventually go a similar way and canaries like Thunberg will stand vindicated in the presumably shut down coal mines.
It's interesting, though, how much grease was applied to get the establishment moving with the times. In 1833, Britain agreed to pay $20 million pounds Sterling, the equivalent of $100 billion in today's terms, to compensate slave owners for lost assets. This required the raising of a loan by the British government on behalf of it's taxpayers, the terms of which, incredibly, weren't paid off until 2015.
When talk shifts to the cost of doing something about climate change, we should cast our minds back a century or two and substitute slave owners with petroleum/coal multinationals.
If history is any guide, the solution may be pretty rich.
