She had been due to attend an event at the annual festival on 13 August.
But she said she would now not do so because the festival receives sponsorship from the Baillie Gifford investment firm.
She claimed Baillie Gifford "invests heavily in the fossil fuel industry".
Baillie Gifford, which has sponsored the book festival for 19 years, said it was not a significant fossil fuel investor, with 2% of its clients' money invested in companies with some business related to fossil fuels compared to a market average of 11%.
A major problem here is that the accusation is too silly to criticise. Oil and its products are so embedded in our and Greta's lives, so essential to daily life that there is no obvious starting point. Parody is an option, but it isn't easy to capture the monumental silliness of it all.
For example, the BBC relies entirely on oil and its products. It does not have wooden TV cameras, lighting based on vegetable oil lamps or bamboo transmitters...
Nope - there isn't enough sanity in there to make parody work.
4 comments:
If Gretbags made a reference to fossil fuels it's proof, if we needed any, of how uninformed she is. Her handlers need to up their game or the funding might fade away.
This latest strop is merely an excuse to keep her in the public eye, as the majority of humanity has forgotten she still exists.
I assume that Gretel Thunderbox wears clothes made by machines which require oil for lubrication. Unless she starts strutting around naked (please, no. Just no), or wears hand sewn or knitted leaves, she should JSTFU.
Penseivat
I particularly like the 2% detail. And we need to see that in the context of the amount of CO2 that gives rise to as a percentage of that produced by the entire country, seen as a percentage of the amount produced by all human activity, seen as a percentage of the total in the atmosphere. A nice graphic from the BBC would elucidate things .
Jannie - Greta is a gift to sceptics because even hardened believers must sometimes wonder if she knows anything at all about the climate.
Penseivat - it does come across as a publicity strop to keep the Greta show alive. It's not easy to see where else she can take it though, just being a tiresome scold has its limits.
Sam - yes and the 2% detail was probably already calculated as part of their green credentials material, although what it means is anyone's guess. Probably not much.
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