After watching films and doing hours of reading on climate change, Greta began to focus on the many horrible natural disasters that were taking place in the world.Greta became so concerned about climate change that "She barely ate or spoke." and she decided to do something. She went on strike from school and sat with a sign in front of Sweden's parliament. Every Friday, Greta would go on strike from school. After all, "What use is school without a future?" Soon she was joined by other students and their school strikes were noticed and spread. Eventually, Greta was invited to speak at the United Nations climate talks in Poland and at thethe World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She wanted the world to panic as she was.
Discussion
Our House Is On Fire is piece of alarmist nonfiction in the format of what appears to be a benign picture book for children. It pretends to tell the story of Greta Thunberg, but is a piece of propaganda promoting climate change ideology to our youngest citizens, without context, fact or balance. It is something parents should be aware of and that their children may be exposed to in school.
Greta Thunberg is presented as a lonely child who is largely ignored by her classmates until she learned about climate change from her teacher. There is no mention that Greta was a mere eight-years-old when her obsession with climate change began. In Our House Is On Fire, Greta is said to have focused on an entire list of climate catastrophes; "She saw ice melting into the sea, disappearing. She saw mighty winds and torrential rains howling across the lands. She saw coral reefs, deep down in the sea, pale as ghosts, bleached by the warming waters. Greta saw living creatures everywhere, struggling to stay alive. Greta saw floodwaters covering houses and people and animals. She saw cities swallowed under rising oceans. She saw the smoldering sun scorch the earth, leaving it bone dry. She saw blazing wildfires, racing through the forests."
Clearly Greta was a young girl obsessed and terrorized by these events, unable to process them or place them within the larger context of our planet's ecosystem. For example, tsunamis are rare, blizzards are a normal part of winter weather as are hurricanes in the summer. Forest fires such as the ones that were burning in the Amazon jungle in the summer of 2019, are part of the natural ecosystem and its rejuvenation process. There is no explanation of the role of media in all this. Media bias has focused on "sexy topics" such as that relating to the Amazon jungle while no mention was made by the media of the forest fires that also occur annually in Africa.
This obsession left Greta sad and unable to eat or speak. To her, the future was bleak and full of despair. There is no mention of the fact that Greta Thunberg, in light of her behaviour, was then diagnosed with Aspergers, a developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction, as well as the tendency to obsessively focus on one topic . One wonders where her parents where to calm her fears and help her put events like natural disasters into perspective. Instead, they fed her fears, becoming vegan and giving up air travel, something that cost her mother her opera career and likely has had little if any impact on world CO2 levels.
With "...each day more unhappy than the next..." Greta began to act on her fears. She went on a school strike and eventually spoke at world events. She told people, "I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day...I want you to act as if the house was on fire." Greta blamed all adults for what is happening.
Filled with these alarmist sentiments, Our House Is On Fire, ostensibly a biography, presents a very simplistic approach to a complex problem. There is no context to the issue of climate change. Instead children are presented with numerous scenarios of natural disasters some of which have never happened (such as cities being swallowed by rising seas) in a way that may be frightening and overwhelming. This picture book plays on children's fears in very destructive and manipulative way. It tells children they cannot trust their own parents to care for their future. It never mentions that each generation has done things that the next sees it might do better. There is no balance because there is no balance in Greta's approach either.
It's impossible to talk about Greta Thunberg without mentioning climate change. But such treatment should be honest, open and realistic. It should not work to alarm young children in the hopes of making them act out of panic. Greta wondered what good attending school would be. She need only have looked to young Boyan Slat who is working to clean the oceans of plastic waste with his invention. With her despairing, frantic and panicked message, Thunberg is no model for young children to aspire to.
Book Details:
Our House Is On Fire by Jeanette Winters
New York: Beach Lane Books 2019
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