Comparing Severn Cullis-Suzuki and Greta Thunberg: Are we ready to listen yet? Two young eco-messengers spoke the same message at the UN, 30 years apart…
There are two reasons why our response to Greta is showing signs of being more powerful than was our response to Severn. One is that the world is more obviously on fire now. The other, perhaps more salient reason is… well, to find out, read on.
Severn Cullis-Suzuki is the daughter of the noted Canadian biologist, environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki and activist Tara Cullen. Here is a speech Severn gave 30 years ago at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 12, calling for action. It’s a pretty good speech.
I’d be surprised if Severn didn’t have a little help as she was writing the speech that she read out at the UN. Severn grew up in a household that is wholly devoted to environmental activism — and I applaud that. I applaud what Dr. Suzuki and Dr. Cullen have been trying to achieve all these years. And I don’t doubt their daughter’s sincerity for a microsecond. Severn has carried on working as a capable and dedicated eco-warrior ever since her UN speech in 1992.
Now here is Greta Thunberg, at the age of 16. Here is a speech Greta Thunberg gave with a similar message at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, in September 2019. Ms. Thunberg has said that she writes all her own speeches, though she solicits input from scientists to make sure she gets her facts straight.
Click on both links, and listen for a few moments. When one compares Severn’s and Greta’s speeches before the UN, I think you’ll agree there’s a difference in immediate emotional intensity that we perceive as they read their prepared speeches. The conceptual content of the two speeches is very similar, yet there is a notable difference in emotional salience and resonance between the two young women’s deliveries. Thunberg’s is more engaging.
Why the difference?
Severn’s delivery feels more like that of a dutiful child in the family business, doing her parents’ will. If we didn’t know she were speaking in front of the UN, we might imagine she’s delivering a homework report at school. And maybe it’s a bit too obvious that someone helped her write her speech. She was, after all, only twelve years old at the time.
Greta’s passion is more immediate. Her words are simpler, yet more powerful, because her emotions are more present. I think it comes from her Aspie clarity of vision and purpose, which gives her an ability to see to the heart of a crucial matter and then to speak to the heart of the matter, without getting sidetracked by social signals of what is desired, accepted, or contextually appropriate social behavior or speech.
Despite the fact that the conceptual content of both speeches is essentially the same, Greta’s shorter, simpler speech feels more authentic and more powerful.
That isn’t to say that Ms. Cullen-Suzuki didn’t believe what she is reading out (of course she did), nor that she was “merely being used” by her parents (whatever level of encouragement, guidance and access her parents made possible, she still had to have the grit and determination to end up getting invited to speak at the UN, amongst many other things she achieved as a young activist). It is, however, reasonable to say that Severn was a relatively ‘normal’ teenager acting on the social signals and expectations of her parents, in conformity with the agenda of the extremely supportive subculture in which she grew up.
Authenticity and ‘Konsekvenz’
Greta is a very different case. Greta is, as she has said, an Aspie with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Severn, in contrast, is ‘normal.’
In the context of what she is trying to achieve, Greta’s characteristics are — surprisingly — a powerful asset.
She didn’t grow up in a household of professional eco-activists, and she wouldn’t be doing what she’s doing if she were ‘normal.’
Greta’s passionate authenticity is obvious to us, along with her intelligence, her righteousness, her commitment, her child’s innocence, her lack of ulterior motive. Normally empathetic people respond to a sincere and passionate child with feelings of protectiveness and nurturance.
We also respond with admiration to the undeniable fact that she is taking on powerful forces with enormous grit and fearless determination.
And we respond to the simplicity of her message: Listen to the scientists.
Among the people who admire Greta’s courage is Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who is now 39 and has two children of her own.
The reality is that Greta nearly starved herself to death in depression over the lack of consequential realism in energy and climate policy — a feature of the world that she was unable to understand, since, as an Aspie, she doesn’t have the dreamworld-unrealism mindstate of “normal” people, who pay attention primarily to social signals, not to scientific facts.
Greta’s parents did not initially support or share her intense concern over the future of the global climate. In their initial view, Greta’s concern over the climate was just an unfortunate focus of attention that had taken hold in their obsessive Aspie child. It took time for Greta to swing her parents round to her perspective — to take the climate issue seriously. And now she’s trying to swing the rest of us round.
Amazingly, unlike her predecessor Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Greta Thunberg may be succeeding.
The difference between Severn and Greta is that they spent their childhoods on opposite sides of the Asch conformity experiment. In carrying out identical missions as child eco-warriors, both of them warning us to act to protect the biosphere, Severn was conforming to the expectations of her parental household and subculture — whereas Greta was a nonconforming member of her parental household, of her age-peer group, and of her national consumerist culture. Despite a lack of initial support, she went of her own volition to what she thought of as the seat of power in her country (the Swedish parliament) and sat down, alone, day after day, with her hand-drawn sign: Skolstrejk för Klimatet.
Her gesture proved so powerful (after it was virally amplified by social media — something that others helped with) that her age-peer group is now conforming with her, rather than the other way round. She has somehow managed to successfully give her generation the signal that it’s okay to care about the future of the climate and the biosphere —the signal that it’s on point to do so, that it’s not embarrassing. She has changed the bias of prevalent social signalling on this issue, at least within an energetic part of her own generation.
And as a side benefit, she has struck an enormous blow for the valuation and respectful integration of Aspies.
We respect and respond to Greta’s uncompromising stance because those of us who aren’t fools understand that the laws of physics are even more uncompromising than is Greta. As she often points out, we cannot negotiate with the laws of physics or ignore them because it’s inconvenient to change our fossil business models, and expect to avoid disaster. We have to get off the goddamn couch. We have to be what in Swedish is called konsekvent — i.e. consequential: hardnosed, real, science-driven, genuinely committed to doing what is necessary in time to solve the problem. We have no time left to piss around. Our failure to stop ourselves from continuing to explode a two-thousand-gigatonne carbon-dioxide bomb in the atmosphere is driving the climate past systemic tipping-points into radical self-reinforcing destabilisation. We need to stop diddling. We have to get real about this.
Really real.
Greta is telling us loudly and clearly, with a simple message that’s both humble and powerful: Don’t listen to me. This is not about me. Listen to the scientists. Unite behind the science.
LISTEN TO THE SCIENTISTS.
And then ACT to implement the measures the scientists say we MUST implement in order to avoid global disaster.
Greta Thunberg is asking us, on behalf of all the children of her own and coming generations, and on behalf of the millions of species who will go extinct if we don’t get off the couch, to stop being weak, useless, cowardly, lazy, reality-denying losers and fools.
She’s telling us to stop letting the nasty people who lie, cheat and steal for the fossil fuels industries to spit in our faces, kick us in the nuts, and vandalise our collective future. She’s asking you to stand up and protect your own and your children’s and grandchildren’s interests and safety.
She’s not asking for us to applaud her. She’s asking us to get up, to look reality in the eyes without flinching as she has done, to behave like responsible adults, and above all, to do what’s necessary.
LET’S GET ON WITH IT.
