The shrill critics of children in politics are only angry because Greta Thunberg has got it right

The sight of senior British politicians staring gormlessly at Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate change activist, when they met her in London this April, was profoundly dispiriting.

But the fact it was so upsetting had nothing to do with Thunberg. The image was so awful—and poignant—in that it seemed to capture the uselessness of the adults. Between them, despite their influence, connections and power, they had achieved less than this gently-spoken young girl, around whom they gathered, hoping some of her shine might rub off of on them. For those politicians, it was a moment of shame.

Listening to children and showing a willingness to accommodate their ideas does not make society more infantile, as Benedict Spence suggests here. If for example, one were to listen to Thunberg and introduce policies to remedy the climate crisis that she identifies, the complexity and disruption involved would be colossal. There would be nothing infantile about the challenge of shifting Britain to a carbon-free economy.

The truly infantile reaction to the problem of climate change would be to snatch the subject from Thunberg’s hands, throw it on the floor and stamp on it, screaming. Well, unfortunately we saw that reaction from quite a few, rather prominent media commentators—Spence among them —a cohort that tends to come over all funny when the science of carbon emissions is up for discussion and who recently re-hashed their outraged performance, only this time with Thunberg as their target. It’s been quite curious to watch the juxtaposition of a calm, composed teenager with her at-times deranged adult detractors.

But really, the objection to Thunberg and to the idea of a child having political influence cannot be separated from the subject at hand—climate policy. It won’t have escaped your notice that the commentators who objected loudest to the sight of her being hosted by British politicians are also predominantly climate change sceptics. And that tells you that the objection to Thunberg is only partly that she is so young. The main reason for the outpouring of bile about uppity children is that her campaign has proved so effective in promoting the environmentalist cause, a success that gets right up the noses of the climate change sceptics.

To dismiss that success, it’s tempting to dismiss Thunberg as a “pawn”, as Spence does. Just as the Child Crusaders of the 13th Century were dispatched to the Holy Land, he writes, now hoards of children are being mobilised to convert us to the gospel of a carbon-free world. It’s a striking comparison. But here we leave the beaten track and head off into the deep undergrowth of smoke and mirrors conspiracy theory. Because of course, if Thunberg is a pawn of some adult interest group, it must follow that, somewhere, there lurks an unseen influencer who manipulates her from on high. There are many objections that can be raised to this kind of paranoid assertion. For one thing, there’s no evidence that it’s true. But more than this, it contradicts the logic of the argument it attempts to make. Thunberg cannot be both directed by an adult and represent the tyranny of children. Those options exclude one other. But I’d exclude both of them because they’re both nonsense. She is no pawn. You only have to listen to her to know that.

It’s odd to think that all of this should have become so controversial, or that Thunberg should have got such an obtuse reaction. Children are educated, encouraged to learn about the world around them and are expected to take an interest in what’s going on out there. It’s only natural that this should extend to politics.

Could we really ever come to regard this as undesirable, deciding instead that children should be discouraged from taking an interest in the outside world? And if children really do have unsafe ideas about society and are to be actively ignored, discouraged or even prevented from speaking, well, they’re not going to shut up on their own, are they? So what then—do we pass a law?

Don’t be worried by the kids, or by people like Greta Thunberg. There’s nothing bad about the idea of the young setting the old straight. The notion of the child as the innocent, as being closer to God and therefore purer of heart than the adults has deep roots in western culture. After all, it was a child who eventually pointed out that the emperor was wearing no clothes. The moral of the story wasn’t that the child ought to have shut up and known its place. It was that sometimes the young see what the grown-ups cannot. The least we can do is listen.