Duncan Garner: Dramatic Greta Thunberg sends counterproductive message

OPINION: I have a real problem with the rhetoric around climate change

In fact, it's so bad that I think it's actually taking us "backwards". 

Let me start with this - if combatting climate change is so important and so urgent, why are we as adults not doing anything that resembles action?

A few of the comfortably off 'climate clique' have bought electric cars while the rest of the world can barely afford the petrol in the second-hand import.

If the world is teetering on a knife-edge and in 11 years we fall off the edge of the Earth, where's the action? The bans? The heavy taxes?

Well, the truth is, the world must go on - you can't stop what you can't stop. 

But why don't we stop politicians flying these big planes across the globe, carbon emissions are sky-high?

Why don't they get into electric cars right now, to show us this is real? 

Because, if they don't, why should we bother?

Yes, I believe man is warming the Earth. But we also have some of the best brains and technology that can actually measure the problem and come up with solutions.

They couldn't do any of this when climate change was declared a 'thing'. 

Now, I'm probably too relaxed about it all, but I'm not the only one. 

I asked 10 people in the newsroom what the goal was of the crucial Paris summit, only one of them knew. 

And Greta Thunberg? Sorry, but a hero for the young people?

She totally overplayed her hand at the UN - too dramatic.

It turns people off and has the opposite effect. 

It's not flexible enough. Because we have solutions. Our buildings are now green, cars are green, we develop concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide. The very problem - man - is the very solution, too. But declaring states of emergency is the over-zealous work of a bored bureaucrat that wants to look like they're saving the planet. 

Do your bit but don't become a climate freak. It's a turn-off and it's frankly counterproductive.

Duncan Garner is host of The AM Show.