Editorial: Conservative attacks on climate activist disrespectful, offensive

Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg, a climate activist from Sweden, gave a passionate speech at the United Nations on Monday that criticized world leaders for not making necessary efforts to protect the environment.

Thunberg has become the focal point of a debate surrounding the movement to stop the climate crisis, with many conservative pundits employing ad hominem attacks against the teenager and saying she is being exploited for a leftist cause. There is absolutely no need for these attacks, which are offensive and distasteful.

Just hours after Thunberg made her U.N. speech, conservative pundit and Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles decided to weigh in on the situation on a Fox News segment about climate change.

“None of that [individual efforts to stop climate change] matters because the climate hysteria movement is not about science,” Knowles said. “If it were about science, it would be led by scientists rather than by politicians and a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left.”

What Knowles said was problematic for a slew of reasons — climate scientists have been warning us for years about the danger our planet and the life on it is in — but what has caused the most backlash online and in the news is the “mentally ill Swedish child” comment.

Thunberg has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. She doesn’t see Asperger’s as a mental illness, though, and has called it her “superpower” in the past.

“Some people mock me for my diagnosis,” she wrote in a February Facebook post. “But Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People may say that since I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position. But that’s exactly why I did this. Because if I would have been ‘normal’ and social I would have organized myself in an organisation, or started an organisation by myself. But since I am not that good at socializing I did this instead. I was so frustrated that nothing was being done about the climate crisis and I felt like I had to do something, anything.”

Knowles took to Twitter Monday to defend his earlier comments and further attack Thunberg.

“There is nothing shameful about living with mental disorders,” he wrote. “What is shameful is exploiting a child — particularly a child with mental disorders — to advance your political agenda.”

Other commentators have also taken the point of view that Thunberg is being exploited to carry out the political agenda of her liberal parents. Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza likened Thunberg’s image — a “Nordic white girl with braids and red cheeks” — to Nazi propaganda from the ’30s. The comparison is absurd and wildly offensive.

What these critics don’t understand is that Thunberg isn’t being exploited. She’s a part of the generation that will have to deal with the fallout of the climate crisis, and is most likely afraid for herself and her peers. Saying she’s being exploited is a way of minimizing the frustration, anger and fear of the generation that will have to face the consequences of government inaction regarding climate policy.

Knowles and other conservative pundits should listen to Thurnberg’s call to action, rather than launch offensive and useless attacks.