I’m curious how much hope got from the hugs between Greta Thunberg and the miners

On Friday evening, the Belgian channel Canvas broadcasted a documentary about Greta Thunberg. It was the second in a three-part series that brought about some sort of verbal wrestling match at a meeting in Davos between her and Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who served as President of the United States for a while.

After the meeting, Thunberg was heartbroken. All attention is focused on her and Trump. “I’m so emotional, I’m so young and I’m so vulnerable, yeah. I’m so proud of that,” she said.

On the way, Thunberg visited a coal-fired power plant and a coal mine in Silesia. She said she was nervous before the confrontation with the miners, because the mine would be closed and it couldn’t be ruled out that the Salesians messenger Will be shooting. These fears turned out to be unfounded: the meeting ended in a series of hugs with a large number of Poles.

Strange how much I was hoping for those hugs. In principle, no less ice cap will melt when coal miners and climate activists hold each other for a while in front of the camera, but among so many great and bad things, you are inadvertently looking for something small and beautiful. Something does not inevitably rush into the abyss. That’s what makers Back to the wild 2 (BNNVARA) I thought when they started designing their program. “There is also a lot of good news to report,” broadcaster Mino Bentfield cheerfully said of Nature. Back to the wild 2 Friday emphasized not so much on man’s catastrophic contribution to nature, but rather on our kind’s reparations for creatures like the dougal tern, basking shark, pulverizing wolf, and scythe. Reports from around the world focus on human initiatives in favor of wildlife. Like a drop in the ocean, these initiatives seemed clear from the exciting news that a hawksbill turtle had begun breeding on a beach in Barcelona. The reason for this was not very exciting: the turtles and their eggs became very hot under their feet in their original breeding grounds.

Messages about climate change make you prefer not to hear them, not read them, and not see them. The prospects in the reports offer only the prospect of misery. Last week, Tony Maud reported in this paper about the European Commission’s “Be a Man Vet” campaign: a tough, strong man slathering on a plate of Spanish beef. At the bottom right was the slogan “Enjoy, it’s from Europe”. Europe as a cyclist without a helmet punctures his tires and regulates his headwinds. Europe, a continent that has not yet realized that there is much more real strength in people who call themselves small and weak, and are proud of it.