Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Greta has accused Andrew Bolt of being part of a hate and conspiracy campaign, for suggesting her climate certainty might be a symptom of her mental disorders.

Naturally Greta’s supporters have joined her condemnation of Andrew Bolt’s article.

What did Andrew Bolt say to draw such a response?

BOLT: WE MUST DOUBT DISTURBED TEEN’S CLIMATE DOGMA

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I have never seen a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru

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What is so fascinating about this Thunberg cult is not just that she’s believed so fervently even though she’s wrong.

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But Thunberg has something very rare as well — a sense of absolute certainty. She shows not the slightest doubt and forgives not the slightest compromise. This allows followers who are tormented with doubt and burden of freedom to relax into her totalitarian certainty.

And in Thunberg’s case, that certainty comes from what normally would be seen as a disability.

If we can believe a book by her mother, opera soprano and Eurovision contestant Malena Ernman, Thunberg went two months without eating when she was 11.

She suffered years of depression and anxiety attacks and was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Her intense fear of the climate is not surprising from someone with disorders which intensify fears.

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Read more (paywalled): https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-greta-has-no-doubts-but-we-should/news-story/bbc290f5c0e468505bd21bf2a6ec19c7

Why do greens find Greta so fascinating? I think Andrew Bolt hit the nail on the head, the certainty is the key.

Certainty is alluring to people who are tormented by their own unacknowledged doubts.

That doubt must be there; if the millions of people who claim to be worried about climate change wholeheartedly believed the world was about to end, the way Greta does, they would abandon their normal lives and march until the world changed.

Greta’s certainty is a taste of the freedom from doubt they yearn for. Greta’s apparent purity of purpose, her refusal to fly, her innocence, is an inspiration to climate believers who feel shame for their personal weakness, for all the carbon compromises they make in their daily lives.

This in my opinion is why any suggestion that Greta’s certainty might be a product of her mental condition draws such a furious response; if Greta’s certainty is unfounded, if her certainty is a symptom of her mental disorders, then Greta’s certainty is false. The magic is broken.

Note: My thanks to Andrew Bolt and Newscorp for providing the text of his article.