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Ms. Thunberg’s message is that we, the adults of the world, have betrayed the youth by destroying their future through climate negligence. The image of the innocent child is powerful, and she carries it off very professionally. And the Apocalypse is the time-honoured climax of terror. The crusade includes elements of repentance and sacrifice, and the ideal standard is the pristine Earth, before any human spoliation. It is quick to identify and scourge heretics. And like most such movements, it becomes more thunderously prophetic and vengeful, adding the moral terror of damnation to the conjured threat of the Apocalypse, especially as the apocalypse doesn’t seem to be getting closer. The ineffable former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, who became a centimillionaire and Nobel Prize winner with his eco-schtick, told the readers of The New York Times in September that we would be doomed within 12 years if we don’t pull up our ecological socks.

The image of the innocent child is powerful, and she carries it off very professionally

In fact, the current IPCC report invoked by Ms. Thunberg, and written by scientists chastened by past embarrassments, (especially the infamous “hockey stick” graph purporting to show a rapid rise in the world’s temperature), incites horrible fears but does not predict their occurrence. It “estimates” that human activities have caused a one centigrade degree rise in world temperatures, that is to say that if there were no humans the temperature would be one degree cooler; this isn’t a one-degree increase traceable exclusively to people in a measured time. And while it is “estimated” that the one degree is “likely” to reach 1.5 degrees by 2052, that is only “if it continues to increase,” not a startling forecast. But anthropogenic emissions (caused by humans) “alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5 degrees.” I emphasize that I am not trying to twist the IPCC’s meaning. It clearly acknowledges that an acceleration (and a slight acceleration at that) in global warming is not certain and if it occurs at all, it will not be solely due to human activities. The IPCC devotes a good deal of its attention to “attribution studies,” which it states are not conclusive and after the serious predictive errors of the past, it is commendably cautious in signalling a possible source of concern. It is clear that if these risks exist, they depend on a great variety of factors, including “rate of warming, geographic location, levels of development, and vulnerability.”