Greta Thunberg is the most important person in the world. There are politicians and public figures with more power and influence. There are people of all kinds who are more well known. But Thunberg has done more than any other human being on our ailing planet to bring a particular argument of existential importance—an argument far more difficult to accept than a mere demand for “climate action”—before the masses for our consideration. And we aren’t really listening.

That’s not for want of trying on her part. Since last year, Thunberg has helped mobilize people across the globe for climate action, including the millions who have participated in this week’s climate strikes. She’s brought a new intensity to climate rhetoric as well. “This is all wrong,” she told an audience at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit on Monday. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!”



The right has responded predictably to her rise to prominence. President Trump tweeted sarcastically this week that Thunberg seemed like a “very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.” On Fox, the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles called her a “mentally ill Swedish child,” which prompted an apology from the network. (Host Laura Ingraham’s comparison of Thunberg and other young climate activists to Children of the Corn did not.)



None of this noise should distract us from the oddity of how positively her words have been received overall. Thunberg has aimed her fire not just at climate denying conservatives, but also at those who have accepted the reality of climate change without making the commitments necessary to truly slow its progress. This includes the liberal world leaders she addressed at the U.N. on Monday.

“The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control,” she said. “Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.”

