Behind the Dairy Flat “climate hero” is a scripted performance

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This was a throwaway piece I wrote last week, but never got around to publishing. I’ve been flat out with getting Hori McGori Eats a Moriori over the line, and it has swallowed almost all my time (and a small fortune). I’m usually very active in the Substack comments, but the book production has taken priority for now. I’ll be back in the comments properly as soon as the book is finally out the door. I appreciate you all!

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There is nothing courageous or inspiring about a 10 year old being pushed into a Greta Thunberg routine over a landfill extension. What we are seeing in Dairy Flat is the inevitable result of years of activist conditioning from people like Greta, her parents and the teachers who treat climate panic as a curriculum. A child standing up at a community meeting and delivering a Thunberg style speech is not a grassroots movement. It is learned behaviour. It is adults using a kid as a political prop because they know a child’s face gets media clicks.

Where exactly does this young girl think Auckland’s rubbish is meant to go? Magic it away? Ship it to some other town so long as she does not have to see it? That is not environmentalism. That is the naïve worldview created when schools preach slogans rather than teach reality. Half the time it is the parents driving it anyway. You only need to look at the picture of her father, Lloyd, in the original article, holding her like she is the next climate saint while she fronts a petition that clearly reads like it was written by daddy himself. The adults write the narrative, the child delivers the performance and the media pretends it is profound.

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If activists want to debate waste management, fine. But let adults do it. Stop wheeling out children as shields for political theatre. This whole saga says far more about the adults involved than it does about a landfill in Dairy Flat.