I have often wondered how figures such as Greta Thunberg could ever rise to such extraordinary fame.
Yes, she is properly reviled in many quarters now, for a long catalogue of statements, actions and predictions. Yet she retains a vast and remarkably loyal following. Much of what she has said and done has aged badly. Some of it has been demonstrably wrong. Much of it has always seemed less concerned with sober analysis than with theatre.
But Greta is not the problem.
Neither are the hordes who discovered that the climate circus offered an extraordinary vehicle for fame, influence and, in some cases, financial gain. Not Al Gore. Not James Hansen. Not Michael Mann. Not the multitude of politicians, activists, academics, lobbyists and opportunists who climbed aboard and kept the machinery running.
They are not the fundamental problem.
We are.
The real question is not why these people acquired so much power. It is why we gave it to them.
We allowed them to define the boundaries of acceptable thought. We allowed them to turn increasingly extravagant predictions into political imperatives. We allowed governments to spend staggering amounts of money pursuing policies whose costs were routinely dismissed as collateral damage. And we allowed the industrial foundations of prosperous societies to be dismantled while congratulating ourselves on our moral superiority.
We wanted it.
At least enough of us did.
We can now perform the familiar ritual of innocence. We can say that we never voted for this particular piece of insanity. That we never personally demanded the destruction of competitive industry, reliable energy or economic resilience.
Perhaps.
But societies are not governed by what each individual privately objects to. They are governed by what enough people tolerate.
And we tolerated it.
More importantly, we never held the people driving it accountable. We never seriously withdrew their political power. We never demanded that failed predictions carry consequences. We never insisted that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
We simply moved on to the next distraction.
Go out on a Saturday night.
Look around.
There appears to be an endless supply of money for new smartphones, designer bags, sports cars, expensive dinners and another weekend in Dubai. People have time and money for entertainment, consumption and status.
But somehow there is never quite enough attention left for the machinery being built around them.
That is the great abdication.
The lunatics do not have to conquer the field if everyone else voluntarily leaves it.
They do not need a majority of people passionately supporting every policy. They need only a sufficiently large number of people who cannot be bothered to object.
And so the field remains theirs.
Until the consequences become impossible to ignore.
Perhaps that is when the great awakening will come. Not when another prediction fails. Not when another politician makes another speech. Not when another celebrity activist is caught saying something absurd.
Only when the foundations beneath ordinary life begin to crack.
By then, however, accountability may be a luxury.
There is a grim possibility that we will not stop this machinery because we suddenly become wiser. We will stop it only after we have exhausted the resources, industries and institutions that made our complacency possible.
And then we will stand among the ruins of our own making, wondering how people like Greta ever became so powerful.
The answer will be brutally simple.
We gave them the power.
https://realclimate.science/2026/09/06/three-years-since-the-apocalypse/#gsc.tab=0