Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist, has captivated the world. The Swedish teenager, who just a little over one year ago conducted a lonely, solo school strike in front of her country’s Parliament, is now inspiring a global movement of millions. Scientists at London’s Natural History Museum have even named a tiny beetle after Thunberg—proof, they said, that “you are never too small to make a difference.” If she’s controversial, it’s mostly because solving climate change will require radical economic change. But it’s also because Thunberg’s symbolic power is rooted in her status as a child, and Western society is acutely conflicted about kids.

Thunberg is small and dresses austerely. To her adult admirers, the fact that she is—and presents as—a child gives her moral authority. We assume kids are purer of heart than adults, perhaps better able to see—and tell—the truth.

In 2012, Malala Yousafzai captured the world’s heart—and drew attention to her cause—at the age of 15, when a Taliban gunman shot and wounded her in retaliation for her outspoken advocacy of girls’ education in Pakistan. And in 2018, after 17 people were murdered (also by a gunman) at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, several students there became prominent national advocates for gun control. A world out to lunch on climate and jaded by violence wakes up when vulnerable kids are at risk.

But Thunberg, in particular, has made conservatives (and a few critics on the left) explode with rage. Many have dismissed her for the same reason others revere her: She’s only a child! What does she know about anything? In an essay titled “Don’t Listen to Greta Thunberg,” the National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote, “There’s a reason that we don’t look to teenagers for guidance on fraught issues of public policy. With very rare exceptions—think … John Stuart Mill, who was a child prodigy—kids ... just repeat back what they’ve been told by adults, with less nuance and maturity.” Thunberg’s critics have argued that she is controlled by the Ford Foundation, “elites,” green capitalists—or her mom. The Daily Mail has portrayed Thunberg’s “glam mummy,” a former opera singer, as a sinister stage mom “exploiting” her child to promote her own book.

Liberals, of course, have responded with horror: When Michael Knowles called her “mentally ill” on Fox News and said she was “being exploited by her parents and by the international left,” Democratic commentator Chris Hahn shot back, “You’re a grown man and you’re attacking a child. Shame on you.”