Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has given a Twitter response to rock icon Meat Loaf's statement that she has been "brainwashed" on climate change, writing on Monday that the environmental issue extends well beyond the two of them.
"It’s not about what some people call me. It’s not about left or right. It’s all about scientific facts. And that we’re not aware of the situation. Unless we start to focus everything on this, our targets will soon be out of reach," Thunberg tweeted, adding a Carbon Brief fact-checking spreadsheet.
Earlier, Meat Loaf, 72, told the Daily Mail in an interview on 1 January that he does not believe in climate change, but rather, that he believes Thunberg, 17, has been "brainwashed."
"I feel for that Greta… She has been brainwashed into thinking that there is climate change and there isn't. She hasn't done anything wrong but she's been forced into thinking that what she is saying is true," said the music artist.
Some netizens sprang to the climate activist’s defence.
Others on social media quoted Greta Thunberg’s own words back at her, stating that, indeed, it was all about “scientific facts”.
Many social media comments repeated previous words addressed to the climate activist teen to “go back to school”.
Teen Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who has argued the case for climate issues since her first strike outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018, was thrown into the spotlight after her impassioned plea for action at the UN General Assembly Climate Action Summit in New York in September 2019.
While Thunburg's activism has earned her accolades among those who believe anthropomorphic climate change, which contributed to her being named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2019, she has been repeatedly criticised by many high-profile figures, who have deplored her approach as too confrontational, divisive, and at times misinformed.
Still others insist that her notoriety was manufactured by the green movement, and denounced her for doing things such as crossing the ocean in a multi-million dollar zero-emissions yacht, despite the option being effectively out of reach for all but the wealthiest travellers.