Claire Harvey: Why I want my daughter to idolise Greta Thunberg
Why are so many right-wing, climate-denying adults afraid of a teenager? Because Greta Thunberg encourages young people to think for themselves, writes Claire Harvey. I hope she becomes my daughter’s role model.
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Who’s afraid of the big bad teenage girl? A whole lot of middle-aged men, apparently.
Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is, I think, an inspiring young woman who never sought out the fame she’s found, and who is now being vilified around the world by adults who apparently can’t cope with a girl with an opinion.
Thunberg is remorselessly mocked, vilified and made fun of by conservatives around the world because she dares to express her fear that the world she and her generation are about to inherit is seriously compromised.
I’d be proud to have this little lady as my daughter’s pin-up poster girl — and not just because, at 16, Greta is so far from the prematurely sexualised ‘role models’ a girl might otherwise be attracted to.
And the resistance to Greta, I think, tells us something about all those people who rail against any hint of tolerance or diversity in schools — or the notion young people might be allowed to think for themselves.
Greta Thunberg became famous last year when she staged a one-kid sit-in outside the Swedish parliament demanding her country take more action to address climate change.
In particular, she wanted Sweden to adhere to its carbon emission reduction promises in the Paris Agreement. This is an agreement, by the way, which Australia has proudly signed up to and which Scott Morrison says we will meet “in a canter”.
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Her protest inspired a series of ‘school strikes’ around the world, where kids took a day or a few hours out of classes to demonstrate outside parliament buildings to let politicians know they didn’t believe the grown-ups were doing enough to mitigate climate change.
And, right on cue, many of those grown-ups reacted like they were in fact the children in the room. Defensive. Hostile. Sad. Offended. Lashing out. Your basic tantrum.
The kicking and screaming turned into a global assault on Greta Thunberg herself. Canadian politician Maxime Bernier called her “clearly mentally unstable. Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear”.
That’s because Thunberg had once said that in her younger years she had “no energy, no friends and I didn’t speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder”.
In response to her critics, Thunberg said on Twitter on September 1: “When haters go after your looks and differences, it means they have nowhere left to go. And then you know you’re winning! I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And, given the right circumstances, being different is a superpower.”
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I think the critics’ core objection to Greta is that she is admired and beloved by young people around the world — particularly young women.
They fear, I think, that Greta’s words are written by others, that she’s manipulated by smarter adults with an agenda for economy-crushing renewables at any cost, and that she’s creating unnecessary fear about the future among impressionable children.
I think Greta’s just speaking the truth as she perceives it. I wish I’d been smart or brave enough to do the same at 16.
Claire Harvey is the deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph.