Energy and Our World

This article originally ran on Forbes.com on June 20, 2024. All rights reserved.

Daniel B. Markind is a Forbes.com energy column contributor. The views expressed in this article are not to be associated with the views of Flaster Greenberg PC.

Like her or hate her, it was impossible to ignore Greta Thunberg. The Swedish teenager (she's now 21) burst on the world scene in 2018 as a leader for dramatic climate activism. "How dare you!" she demanded of the United Nations at its New York world headquarters. "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood", she said.

The extent to which that might be true is a matter of conjecture, of course, but Thunberg certainly got the world’s attention. She seemed to be the natural leader for serious climate action among the younger generation.

That all changed after October 7, 2023, when Greta found a more important cause – to her that is – hatred of Israel. So determined was she to seek to destroy the Jewish state that she travelled to the Swedish city of Malmo to participate in mass demonstrations demanding a young Israeli singer be banned from participating in the annual Eurovision song contest. Miss Thunberg insisted that her voice be heard in opposition to the Israeli singer, yet she remained silent as Hezbollah rockets set fire to thousands of acres in northern Israel. For the first time, the environment was less important to Greta than world politics. "How dare you", indeed.

It's hard to see where Greta goes from here. Any future attempt by her to exert leadership of the environmental movement will be met with howls by many who either support Israel, are neutral about it, or are just primarily concerned about the world environment.

This is not necessarily good news for the rest of us. As the recent European parliamentary elections show, many Europeans are tiring of the green agenda. With costs rising and a feeling that the burdens of combating climate change are disproportionately shared, environmental activists now are fighting a rear-guard action to maintain momentum in combatting climate change. One thing that people have clearly realized is that environmental issues and energy transition are difficult subjects. They do not lend themselves to simplistic answers or pithy slogans.

The tragedy here is that, as she matured and learned, Greta Thunberg seemed to be a natural leader of the green movement. As an adult, she could have led the movement to fight manmade climate change from a more educated and practical standpoint. Greta could have been the spokesperson for the movement as it seeks to push the world forward and educate it about the compromises needed and the priorities that we must follow to defeat climate change, or at least to learn to live with it.

That opportunity seems distant now. For whatever reason, Ms. Thunberg aligned herself with the intersectionality that claims somehow that there can be no moving forward environmentally without Palestinian independence, possibly at the expense of the Jewish state. As the Palestinians have no real record of environmental stewardship, it was difficult to understand the connection. However, such is the concept of intersectionality.

In yielding her environmental bona fides to anti-Israel intersectionality, Greta Thunberg no doubt has diminished what had been her life's work. We all will be the poorer for it.