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Reader letter: Greta Thunberg is ungrateful and needs a reality check

The rise of teenage activist Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protestors has sparked a major shift in public awareness of climate change. Pictured, the 16-year-old Swedish activist. Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP.

This reader thinks teenage activist Greta Thunberg and all the “climate change fanatics” need a reality check.

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Is it just me, or does anybody else concern themselves about the poor, manipulated child, Greta Thunberg and her growing band of misguided followers (including ridiculous politicians) in the new climate religion?

Yes, I know I'll be called a "denier" of climate change, but that is not true. I am a person wishing we would cease a one-sided debate which is forging a path towards unsustainablity at massive cost, a breakdown of society being the inevitable outcome.

Miss Thunberg needs a reality check, as do all climate change fanatics. Groupthink (encouraged by governments and the media, a classic case of not letting the facts get in the way of the rhetoric) is not the way forward.

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Will these young activists sign away their right to drive cars, have continental holidays and cease purchasing electronic equipment because of the damage done to the environment in their manufacture? When reality dawns, what then?

Politicians pretend to listen then make promises of vast sums of cash to idiotic schemes such as even more of their beloved wind energy, the "panacea", despite the warning of experts.

It is not our national grid, or remaining industry, that will have any effect on climate change, it is the emerging Asian nations who aspire to the life-styles of the West. They will continue to erect power stations using fossil fuels. Let's hope carbon capture and storage will soon become a reality.

How dare Thunberg complain we have betrayed her generation and stolen her dreams?

Maybe if she wasn't bunking off school for a year, she might have studied the terrible lives of children in Victorian times. Her generation are lucky to be growing up during an era of prosperity, wellbeing and comfort that would not have been imaginable even just a few decades ago.

This is as a direct consequence of the efforts and sacrifices of her parents' generation and their forefathers. It has been made possible by economic development based around plentiful fossil fuels.