The
Curse Of Cassandra.
Chris
Trotter
Unheeded:
What god has Greta Thunberg offended, I wonder, to be afforded so
many opportunities to deliver so many chilling warnings of climate
catastrophe to so many world leaders – to so little effect? Like
the Trojan seeress, Cassandra, she looks into the future and sees the
ruin that awaits her generation, bears witness fearlessly to the
truth, and is viciously derided for her trouble.
27
September, 2019
IT
WAS CASSANDRA’S divinely administered curse: to see the future –
but not to be believed. To secure the daughter of the King of Troy’s
affections, the god Apollo bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy.
When Cassandra, unsecured, refused his amorous advances, the angry
god spat into her mouth: corrupting his own gift and sealing the
princess’s fate.
Poor
Cassandra, when the people of Troy, delirious at their “victory”
over the Greeks, hauled within the city walls the mighty wooden horse
left behind by their erstwhile besiegers as a “gift”, the seeress
ran at it with axe and fire. The angry Trojans restrained Cassandra –
calling her mad. The Greek warriors hidden in the horse’s belly,
fated to kindle the proud towers of Ilium, were spared.
What
god has Greta Thunberg offended, I wonder, to be afforded so many
opportunities to deliver so many chilling warnings of climate
catastrophe to so many world leaders – to so little effect? Like
the Trojan seeress, she looks into the future and sees the ruin that
awaits her generation – and bears witness fearlessly to the truth.
Oh
how she speaks! Sometimes with the cold detachment of the judge who
looks down upon the convicted killer in the dock, conscious only of
her duty to pass the sentence mandated by Mother Nature’s,
immutable laws.
On
other occasions, such as her speech to the Climate Summit in New York
on Tuesday morning, Greta’s ice is mixed with fire. The pig-tailed
16-year-old’s voice trembles with emotions that threaten to
overthrow her at any moment. Somehow, she regains control of herself,
of her voice. Enough to pronounce her crushing judgement upon the
generation who, by their obdurate inaction, have stolen their
children’s future.
“We
will never forgive you!”
Greta
Thunberg is not the only player in the Climate Change tragedy upon
whom has been laid the dreadful burden of Cassandra. Apollo has also
spat into the mouths of the scientists.
All
over the world they have laboured to collect the data. New Zealand
scientist, Dave Lowe, started recording the slow but steady rise in
atmospheric carbon dioxide as far back as 1973. For more than forty
years these men and women of Science have watched the evidence
accumulate. Knowing that the possibility of their being in error was
getting smaller and smaller with every paper that was presented,
every report that was published.
They
have peered into the future. They know what lies ahead. The melting
ice caps; the rising seas; the deadly storms. The Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse: Famine, Pestilence, War and Death have all
acknowledged their foresight with a studied nod of their terrifying
heads. The scientists, too, have cried out a warning but, like
Cassandra – and Greta – they have not been heeded.
Poor
Greta. On Tuesday morning she told the assembled leaders of the
world’s nations:
“You
say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter
how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that, because if you
really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act,
then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.”
No,
not evil, Greta. Say rather that we are enchanted. We can hear you
but we cannot act. In the fairy tales you invoked so angrily in your
speech, characters rendered so unaccountably immobile would be said
to be “spellbound”.
What
sort of spell could possibly be powerful enough to bind the whole of
humanity: commoners as well as kings? To that question Greta’s
speech also contained an answer:
“People
are suffering. People are dying and dying ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk
about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth”.
Ah,
yes – the money. And more than the money. The dream of wealth
without consequences; power without restraint. That is the spell,
Greta. That has always been the spell. And we cannot break it.
The
Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, Edward Arlington Robinson
(1869-1935) was also captivated by the legend of Cassandra. In his
eponymous poem he writes:
The
power is yours, but not the sight;
You
see not upon what you tread;
You
have the ages for your guide,
But
not the wisdom to be led.
Certainly
not by a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
THE
GRETA THUNBERG
PROBLEM, so many men
freaking out about the tiny
Swedish climate demon
Is
she the brainwasher or brainwashee?
First
Dog on the Moon
