The recent, and unusually unfortunate, phenomenon that is the rise of Greta Thunberg is addressed by Theodore Dalrymple in his September essay over at the New English Review. The good doctor goes on to comment on a myriad of his favorite topics including: the perpetual adolescence of the adults of today, the fraudulant field of psychology, grievance-mongering of our liberal education systems, and the slow death of genuine humor in our overly-sensitive, politically-correct culture.

Poor Greta Thunberg! She is to self-righteousness and self-satisfaction what Mozart was to music, namely an astonishing youthful prodigy. Unlike Mozart, however, she is a very unattractive child, her unattractiveness arising not from her natural physical endowment but from the sheer grimness of her humourless puritanism which is inscribed on her face for all to see. She has succeeded in adding a new vision of hell to the many that I already have, namely being preached at by her for all eternity without intermission.

It is said that she suffers from a psychiatric condition, but whether or not this is so, her awfulness (of which, of course, she is blithely unaware) is not really her fault. Her transformation into a celebrity is the work of adults. It is they who have turned her into the Ayatollah Thunberg, the Khomeini of climate change.