No One is Too Small to Make a Difference Review

Rating: 2.5/5                     

    In the past year, 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Tunberg has gained a prodigious amount of traction in the media after skipping school on Fridays in favor of peacefully demonstrating on the streets about climate change awareness and riding a zero-carbon solar boat around the world. Like many people, I appreciate her mettle to go out and use her young age as a catalyst for matter-of-fact and forceful rhetoric as well as her unrelenting persistence. However, there are many dissidents (including a few reviews on Goodreads who-shall-not-be-named) who perceive her as more of a burden for a number of reasons along these lines:

"Her parents and large corporations are just using her to advance their agenda."

"Why should we listen to a schoolgirl when we should be listening to high-profile scientists?"

"She's a misinformed hypocrite encouraging climate change alarmism."  

    My answer to the first two criticisms is "BS!". It's as if the critics here skimmed through the book without reading it word-for-word. Firstly, Greta did clearly say she didn't have any organization behind her and that most of this was her effort. Secondly, if anyone noticed, Greta explicitly stated she doesn't need anyone to listen to her as long as they pay attention to what the IPCC scientists have been saying. Ever heard of the adage "Don't shoot the messenger!". That being said, I partially agree with the third complaint along with a few other too numerous to mention here. While I perhaps wouldn't venture as far as to peg her as a hypocrite, she is misinformed on several aspects and her speeches were equally flawed. For starters, though any renewable energy source would be safer than the fossil fuels most of us are using, solar panels aren't as innocent as they seem since they leave out plenty of toxic waste such as cadmium, copper, lead, etc. Furthermore, while Greta did give plenty of frightening caveats about rising greenhouse gas emissions, she failed at providing solutions to the problem such as switching nuclear power (which leaves out far less waste than solar) and was too uncompromising on tactics which can reduce emissions because she wants to completely stop them right now even though it is not realistically feasible. Another statement in the book I disagree with was that having Aspergers is "a superpower" that allows her to see things "in black and white". As someone on the autism spectrum, I can say though the existence of climate change is black and white, the solutions and compromises involved are much more complex than "you either stop emissions or you don't". Oh well, as the saying goes "if you know one autistic person you only know one autistic person". Finally, I can also agree the writing became too repetitive after some time but being a collection of related speeches, I did expect some degree of repetition.

    In summary, as much as I appreciated Greta Thunberg's boldness and intentions which were all positive, this book does suffer from many flaws mulling over it which is why I'm reducing my rating 2.5 from my initial 3.5 rating. There isn't any new information you'll get differing from the surfeit of scholarly knowledge available, and it likely won't convince a climate change denier but instead counterproductively, give them more holes to poke on. Nevertheless, reading it won't significantly rob anyone of their time since it's a very short 68 pages.