Letters to the Editor: Greta Thunberg’s powerful rebuke of ‘fairy tales of eternal economic growth’

To the editor: Greta Thunberg provides an eloquent voice for the reality of the climate crisis. (“Greta Thunberg admonishes leaders as U.N. climate summit fails to deliver action,” Sept. 23)

Global leadership is telling “fairy tales of eternal growth” because that is all they know. The old model of “growth” is built like a pyramid scheme. It will collapse in debt and ruin when there are no more “new buyers.”

Young activists are calling for a paradigm shift to sustainability. What can we do today to leave the planet a better place than we found it?

Charmaine Curtis Jacobs, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: While it is nice that young people are becoming aware of something outside their personal worlds, I would like to remind them that just grousing isn’t really activism. What solutions are they coming up with?

In the photos showing the climate-change protests, I saw ladders, paper signs, clothes and many other products that either were produced from petroleum or used gas to be shipped somewhere. I’m guessing those protestors had to travel using fossil-fuel-burning transportation. Same applies for the food they eat and the cellphones they are addicted to (mostly made of plastic, a petroleum-based product).

The point is, with hardly any effort, I have listed items these young activists used as they complained about what they perceive as the cause of global warming — the older generation. To paraphrase their complaints, how about some real action on their part instead of just empty protests?

Larry Wright, Long Beach

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To the editor: Silly kids. Climate change will not wipe everyone out.

No matter how hot and stormy the surface of the planet gets, no matter how far north and south the equatorial deserts extend, the very rich will survive. Indoors with their computers and robots, their farms, labs, and factories, they will live, eat, work, play and raise their children.

There won’t be room for billions of people. But the Gateses, the Zuckerbergs, the Brins and Pages, the Buffetts and Murdochs will be fine.

James Holder, Long Beach

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To the editor: At a minimum Thunberg deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for waking up the world to this catastrophic crisis. Amazing that it takes a high school girl from Sweden to tell world leaders the obvious and press them for action.

Thank you, Greta.

Emily Loughran, Los Angeles