Greta Thunberg is having a moment.
The 16-year-old climate activist (and world’s biggest pessimist) has become one of the most famous teenagers in the world after she began refusing to attend school until Sweden, her home country, reduced carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement. Sweden has yet to comply with her demands—although their latest budget does have a big focus on climate—but for three weeks, the ninth-grader sat outside the Swedish Parliament and handed out leaflets reading, “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.” She’s Sweden’s own Wednesday Addams, but with a cause.
Thunberg is undeniably having some kind of impact. The recent climate strike across the world was inspired by Thunberg’s activism, and she’s spoken at Davos, the United Nations, the European Parliament, and before Congress. She’s also been mocked by Donald Trump. It’s too soon to know if any of her speeches or marches will lead to actual climate action on the part of world leaders and industry, but even if nothing concrete comes from all this, she may very end up with a Nobel Prize (and, one hopes, a raise in her allowance).
I truly admire Greta Thunberg. She’s doing important work, and it’s fun to watch her scold world leaders. If they were able to feel shame, I think Thunberg may be the one person to make them. And she’s become quite the media darling: She’s been profiled or analyzed or reported on in just about every major media outlet in the United States. She’s lauded by some (Time named her one of the world’s 25 most influential teenagers of 2018) and pitied by others (conservative columnist Tiana Lowe wrote that “her parents, the media, and the climate alarmist Left are basically engaging in child abuse”), but even outlets that hate what she’s doing love nothing more than discuss it.
But here’s the thing: The story of climate change is not the story of Greta Thunberg.
It’s much bigger than her, and the worst impacts of climate change are being felt far from Sweden or even the West. In Africa, for instance, a continent that produces a small percentage of the world’s carbon emissions, extreme weather, including heat, drought, and floods, threaten the food supplies of millions of people. In March, Cyclone Idai, one of the most catastrophic storms on record, killed at least 1,300 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis impacting three million. There are 92 million Google News results for Greta Thunberg’s name; there are 100,000 for Cyclone Idai. That’s less than 1 percent.
There are lots of reasons that someone like Greta Thunberg gets more attention than the entire continent of Africa. She’s a cute girl with an impressive scowl, and her story is more inspiring and much simpler. Plus, the media tends to feed on itself: Instead of beat reporters or foreign correspondents, most outlets these days have a bunch of people like me—keyboard critics who look around at what everyone else is talking about and decide to join in. And that, in turn, influences what the public thinks and talks about.
So instead of talking about the cyclone that killed 1,300 people, we’re talking about this one teenager from Sweden. It’s a problem, and I readily admit my own culpability in this trend. I’m writing about Greta Thunberg at this very moment. Still, I hope that when people read these stories about her or any other activist, they realize that this problem cannot be defeated by individuals alone. She’s not Jesus, come back to save us from our sins. She’s just a teenager, and while the media focuses on Greta Thunberg, the real story of climate change is happening across the world.
