Does Greta Thunberg have the answer to COVID-19?

Or will the 17-year-old just keep lecturing us about climate change?

Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg
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COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory.

World leaders are baffled by how to respond. The science keeps contradicting itself. The world’s greatest mathematicians can’t keep up with the ever-changing data sets. Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help?

Never fear, Greta’s here. That’s right. Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most.

On Thursday evening, CNN will…

COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory.

World leaders are baffled by how to respond. The science keeps contradicting itself. The world’s greatest mathematicians can’t keep up with the ever-changing data sets. Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help?

Never fear, Greta’s here. That’s right. Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most.

On Thursday evening, CNN will host a live town hall called ‘Coronavirus: Facts and Fears’, featuring former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Miss Thunberg.

Of course, while Greta understands that COVID-19 is important, she will be eager to stress that it should not distract us from that more urgent challenge of climate change — even if, thanks to the lockdown, global CO2 emissions have been reduced by more than 25 percent.

Miss Thunberg wants us to remember that if the virus doesn’t get us, the global warming will. During an Earth Day event on April 22, she asserted that the world must tackle the climate crisis and the coronavirus at the same time.

‘Today is Earth Day, and that reminds us that the climate and the environmental emergency is still ongoing,’ said Thunberg. ‘We need to tackle both the corona pandemic, this crisis, at the same time as we tackle the climate and environmental emergency, because we need to be able to tackle two crises at once.’ Her co-panelist gently nodded, meekly going along with the charade that this high school dropout’s comments actually added value to the discussion.

Eco-celebrities like Thunberg have been not-so-quietly rejoicing over the pandemic’s effect on carbon emissions and other environmental variables — never mind the poor souls choking their lungs out all over the planet.

Some climate change activists believe that stay-at-home orders offer ‘clues’ for the fight against climate change. Others are adopting talk of ‘flattening the curve’ to refer to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

One New York Times opinion piece recently expressed a hope that lockdowns would make us mend our anti-planet ways: ‘Maybe, as you hunker down with cabinets full of essentials, your sense of what consumer goods you need will shrink,’ wrote the author, Meehan Crist. ‘Maybe, even after the acute phase of the coronavirus crisis has passed, you will be more likely to telecommute… Maybe among the relatively wealthy, jumping on a plane for a weekend away or for a destination wedding will come to seem unthinkable.’

Economic destruction is good, you see. It helps Mother Nature. Cockburn observes that one force ties together the coronavirus pandemic and the issue of climate change. In recent years, the media has come to fetishize particular apocalyptic voices — Thunberg, AOC, Bill Nye, Gov. Cuomo, Dr Fauci — and turn them into cultural idols. They elevate these people and demonize those who dare to dissent.

It doesn’t matter that Greta clearly knows little more than most 17-year-olds about COVID-19. To CNN, she feels right. Besides, does COVID-19 really matter when the world is doomed by climate change anyway?