ReGreta
How the West fell for a child cult savant
It seems like a world away when environmental policy debates were dominated by a phenomenon known as Greta – a haunting teenager thrown into the limelight to growl at our leaders, focalize our collective guilt and energize the disenfranchised youth.
What (who) caused the rapid rise of this climate celebrity? Did the media behave responsibly by amplifying the movement of teen lobbyists? And why are we no longer listening to Greta? Did we grow tired of Greta Thunberg’s insulting slurs or did she grow tired of us?
From 2018 to 2020, world leaders were falling over themselves for a photo-op with the Swedish cult savant. When she arrived in New York posing triumphantly at the bow of a private yacht that carried her across the Atlantic, the product known as “Greta” was an activist marketer’s dream come true.
This Joan of Arc typecast was launched to lead the believers in a war against the infidels. Who would dare argue against the diktats demanded by a child? Who would dare suggest any of this was staged or planned?
In August, 2018 Greta started her school strike. By December she delivered a speech at the UN COP 24 climate conference in Katowice, Poland, telling the World Economic Forum in Davos to panic like their house is on fire in January 2019 and speaking at various EU bodies in February. And we are supposed to believe this is a normal progression for any 15-year-old and none of this was managed.
Her simple solutions could not be questioned. Anyone who did was dismissed as a white, middle-aged male with Greta issues. If I had written this article four years ago, I would have been condemned, canceled and attacked.
Panic Idealism
As a haunting voice for the future, Greta demanded immediate action and no compromises. Stop flying, stop meat, stop consumption, stop capitalism… Anything less than 100% of what she and her movement demanded meant she would wag her finger at you and cuss: “How dare you!”. And the media and western leaders bought it up without thinking.
Greta tapped into a form of panic idealism that was being exploited by the climate death cult of the day, Extinction Rebellion. Her house was on fire and people needed to act. As a cult guru, she never became a front member of any NGO but a simple retweet could energize any activist campaign. Organizations like Fridays For Future were built around Greta’s activism and she spawned an army of Greta-like influencers around the globe.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Once touted as a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize, Greta has seen her star wane over the last few years. She no longer captures the aura and admiration of world leaders and the media. What happened to make the meteoric rise of this activist sensation fizzle out?
COVID not only struck the ability to turn out large crowds around Europe (I attended her last event in Brussels in March, 2020 on the eve of the first lockdowns), it also put her single-minded obsession into perspective. The climate campaign could not compete for media attention when we shifted focus to a global health pandemic. Climate activists were soon trying to restore their narrative by claiming the risks from the coronavirus were insignificant compared to the daily death toll from global warming.
Like any activist campaign, the message could only be exploited so much. Like the decline of Extinction Rebellion, the relentless street circus pantomimes (from those ethically appointed with saving the planet) started to become stale, their blockades insensitive and their virtue signaling unpleasant. Insult me and my practices once, I hear you. Insult me on the daily and I’ll soon stop listening.
The world moved on and so did Greta. She still tweets regularly but mostly on the situation in Gaza and social justice issues and rarely on her burning house. She was not involved in the COP28 in Dubai or in any of the activist campaigns around it. She said it was a waste of time.
So maybe Greta, having graduated from high school, moved on to personal pursuits and started to learn that simplistic solutions to complex issues were indeed child’s play. Or, no longer a child, maybe we just got bored with her. I suspect the next child lobbyist the activist community recruits will need to be a whole lot younger.
How to Use a Child
Greta was not the first and she won’t be the last child phenom to be exploited by activists and the media. In 2013, well before Greta, I wrote an article focusing on how shamelessly activist parents were in pushing their children into the lobbying arena.
NGOs have known for a long time that a simple campaign solution could be packaged more effectively when delivered via the voice of a child – innocent and future oriented. It seems like every UN conference now has to have a daycare center for their keynote speakers. But the Severns, Rachels or Malalas of the world were reliant on their parents’ networks and strategic objectives.
After the Parkland school shooting, activists realized that a global army of passionate, outspoken children, networked and speaking in sync could be more effective than a single child. Thus after the essay contests and the grooming, a new movement was born. Greta’s persona was the perfect spearhead.
The Media Sucker Punch
By the time of Greta’s first climate strike, the media should have become wiser to the motives behind the PR firm pushing this activist campaign exploitation. But the temptation for the media to amplify the microphone when a child articulately trashes the establishment is too much to resist. The media are not only falling for this old trick, they are actively jumping right in and profiting from it.
There is something ethically distasteful about how the media legitimizes the child lobbying movement. Of course we need to take the concerns of future generations into consideration but when child influencers are mouthing what their activist handlers are feeding them, should the media take some responsibility in how they are then amplifying these campaigns?
Minors are protected from exploitation in the workplace, in entertainment, in the courts, in the schools… but when they are exploited in lobbying campaigns, that is part of democracy and the press celebrate them. This is exploitation and the media should have some ethical codes of conduct here.
Maybe that’s why Greta never won that coveted Nobel Prize.