Reading Greta Thunberg’s No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

I found and bought this book at a Christmas market stall in York. The market stall owner was very passionate about climate change activism and kindly encouraged me to join a march. His passion mirrored Greta Thunberg’s within No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.  

The book is made up of speeches, in chronological order, at various climate rallies and marches. During this pandemic, I feel there has been a normalisation of being able to access information no matter where you are in the world. Something which has made me realise just how ‘isolated’ I have been outside of this pandemic. My geographical location does not allow for a yoga class in a trendy London studio but now I have the pick of “pay what you can” yoga classes on Instagram. I digress. What is interesting about this book is, it feels like a, current, common way of disseminating information but through the old media of print, rather than social media. This works to the advantage of Thunberg. Instead of watching these past speeches on YouTube, I focused on what is being said without my thoughts wandering: thinking about Thunberg’s Swedish accent which makes me think about how education outside of the UK focuses on the importance of being multilingual; or thinking about what clothes she is wearing and, as she is a climate activist, wondering where she got these clothes from as she must be heavily against fast fashion. Maybe it is just me, and my sociological imagination, which seems to wander, but reading her speeches as a book helped me focus on what she was so passionate about: the impact of climate change.

The book starts with a speech in 2017. Thunberg states that ‘we’ only have 3 years to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Now, 3 years later in 2020, there is speculation that the earth is showing short term recovery from human damage as a result of our quarantining. How much of this is fact and how much has been exaggerated in order for us to feel better about our damage to the environment?

Greta wants the reader to be alarmed at the rate of climate change and what this can mean for human existence in 11, 30 and 60 years. She states that it is too late to make world leaders care about climate change and focuses upon the power the lies with ‘the people’ to put pressure on companies, our own employers and government to change their ways to reverse climate change. It is interesting that Greta implicitly refers to the diffusion of responsibility, which has been explored within psychological studies. Greta states that if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame, however, she states “the bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility”.

A deeper look at Greta’s word choice may reveal her ontological and epistemological perspective. Greta states, that as homo sapiens we are animals, she questions “how can animals harm their environment and not care about it?” Similarly, when writing about this book, I have used the terms, human, existence, earth, environment and referred to the future of these. These terms could demonstrate Greta’s ontological perspective as aligning with objectivism: the world is an external reality which is suffering from human harm. However, when thinking about this, could it be possible that as humans shape this world we are actively changing and constructing this reality? If so, this could align instead with constructionism. Greta does want us to unite behind science which subscribes to a positivist epistemology and is linked to the objectivist ontology. Or, perhaps, I am thinking too much into this and letting my indicative MA Social Research reading seep into my thoughts on this book.  

The book does not explicitly refer to lifestyle changes needed to meet environmental targets but Greta does refer to the paradox of capitalism. Greta states that we cannot escape this crisis by buying and building things, the crisis came about because of excessive buying and building of things. This makes me think of all the caring capitalist acts during times of sadness. For instance, the t-shirts with “be kind” after the news of Caroline Flack’s suicide. Although these did donate 100% of profits to charity, what some neglect is exactly this: profits. If you buy a t-shirt for £10, and it costs £2 to make this, then sure the charity is getting £8, but what about the cost to the environment of what it took to make these. Is the material sustainable? Is the t-shirt in itself a form of fast fashion that will not withstand the test of time and ultimately contribute towards the growing land fill of clothes? The same came be said about the surprising cheap “save the bees” t-shirts I’ve been seeing on social media advertisements.

Greta mentions a variety of environmental problems we are facing due to our past and current actions which provides a shock value to her speeches with the intention of ‘waking up’ the reader to the realities of climate change. Indeed, when Greta mentions the acidification of oceans, I paused to think of the news stories surrounding the ‘toxic lake’ in Siberia where instagrammers flocked to take pictures due to its unusually bright turquoise colour. However, the reason for this unusual colour was due to its toxicity. Certain influencers who had jumped or dived into the lake ‘for the gram’ developed skin rashes. The juxtaposition of the ‘beauty’ of the lake and instagrammers using this as the perfect backdrop for their photo’s highlights Greta’s points exactly.  

Overall, I would recommend this book. The name of the book is appropriate as it’s a relatively quick read (of only 67ish small pages) and makes the reader think about climate change and the impact we are having on our environment. Although, as you can see it has made me pause to think and go off on a tangent at times so maybe your read will be quicker than mine.