Greta Thunberg’s yacht, the Malizia II, has delivered her to the UN climate conference in New York – two weeks after she first set sail from Europe. The transatlantic trip was a masterstroke in PR, with every major media outlet broadcasting updates on the journey and detailing the hardships Thunberg has endured – no toilet, no shower and sea sickness.
The accusations of hypocrisy have also rolled in thick and fast, criticizing everything from the plastic water bottles used by the crew, to the long-haul flights taken by the sailors responsible for returning the yacht to Europe.
Thunberg has discovered the perils of pursuing such an ideologically pure cause: if you preach an uncompromising message, your audience will judge you on similarly uncompromising terms, even as you attempt to live out your ideals. Those with religious leanings have known this for centuries: if you don’t practice what you preach then your message quickly falters. Indeed, sometimes I wonder whether the appeal of climate change activism comes from its ability to fill the ideological void left by the decline of religion in the post-Christian West. Greta’s moral authority about the future of civilization and how we should and shouldn’t behave as individuals carries all the personal challenge and sense of fire and brimstone as the message of the puritans.