Who is Greta Thunberg?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Who is Greta Thunberg?
Position1 of 5›: Greta Thunberg is a force for change
Argument‹2 of 4›: Greta Thunberg sees it how it is

In part, Greta Thunberg's Asperger's syndrome has helped her see through the social cues surrounding climate change and grapple with the bare facts, and the facts are nothing short of terrifying.

The argument

When most children and teenagers identify a threat, they look to the adults around them to determine how concerned they should be about that threat. If they hear a loud noise, and the adults don’t seem alarmed, the children deduce they too have no reason to feel alarmed. Many with Asperger’s syndrome struggle to pick up on the social cues around them. This means that Greta, unlike many other teenagers, is less likely to take social cues from adults to assuage her fears. When she reads the science surrounding climate change, she engages directly with the facts. And these facts terrify her. Part of what makes Greta such a powerful force is her ability to remain uninfluenced by the relative calm with which others approach the climate crisis. She will not be assuaged, even when adults around her are relatively relaxed, because she sees the facts for what they are. As David Roberts at Vox News put it, Greta is like a “transparent lens” through which the world’s youth views climate change. This makes her, and the youth movement, a force to be reckoned with.

Context

People with Asperger’s find it difficult to pick up on social cues. This has given Greta the unique ability to see through the bluster surrounding climate science and see the facts for what they are—absolutely terrifying.

Premises

[P1]Most teenagers gauge how alarmed to be by reading adults' social cues, but Greta's Asperger's makes her less likely to absorb others' relative calm; she instead engages directly with the climate-science facts, which terrify her. [P2] This immunity to social reassurance makes her, as Vox's David Roberts put it, a "transparent lens" through which the world's youth view climate change, powering a formidable youth movement. [C] Therefore Greta Thunberg sees the crisis as it really is, making her a force for change.

Counter-arguments

She doesn’t see it how it is, she sees it how scientists and those around her tell her to see it. She accepts information at face value. She is too young and naïve to question the motives of those feeding her information. As a result, Greta Thunberg has become a valuable tool of the left. She is a puppet, rolled out by climate change activists and scientists to push their ideology and mistruths on the next generation. They believe that by using an articulate, passionate, highly-intelligent child, the global youth will sit up, take note, and believe the same facts and mistruths that Greta herself so willingly devoured. And they are right. They have.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P4] She doesn't see the facts for what they are, she sees what she is told to see.