The infantilization of the apocalypse

While protesters in the past have demanded to be treated like adults, today's climate protesters are demanding to be treated like children. Why is it like that? Why have leftist activists reversed their tactics?

Pour milk on the floor. Throw food against the walls. Refuse to eat. Gluing body parts. Throwing paint. Refusing to leave. Threats to pee your pants and poop. Yelling accusations. Are these the behaviors of a toddler throwing a tantrum? Yes. But they are also the dominant tactics of today's "climate activists".

Let's take the case of Gianluca Grimalda. On October 19, Grimalda taped himself to the floor of the visitor center next to a Volkswagen factory in Germany along with 15 other members of a climate activist group called Scientist Rebellion. VW security personnel brought pizza to Grimalda and the other activist scientists but Grimalda, feeling disrespected, went on a hunger strike in retaliation.

Grimalda was immediately outraged by his treatment. "VW told us they support our right to protest," he complained on Twitter, "but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl so we could urinate and defecate properly while we were taped, and they turned off the heating.”

Many were quick to point out the childish nature of the protest. "I'm a serious anti-fossil fuel scientist," wrote one user. "Now turn on the gas heater and bring me my potty."

Gianluca Grimalda (right) and other climate activists protest in front of Volkswagen's visitor center

The activists say the childish tactic was necessary. Grimalda tweeted that he and his colleagues are protesting "until our demands to decarbonize the German transport sector are met." On Sunday, after climate activists in Germany threw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting, they yelled at surrounding museum visitors. "We won't be able to feed our families by 2050," they claimed because of climate change.

But Volkswagen already pledged last year to stop selling vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predicts growing yields even in very hot temperatures, as long as farmers continue to use fertiliser, irrigation and deploy tractors. That means yields will continue to rise under climate change as long as farmers don't listen to climate activists' advice.

The activists, who consistently degrade valuable works of art and themselves, claim they are concerned about food and energy supplies. But by opposing oil, gas and fertilizer production, they are actively diminishing both. For the past few months, I've called climate activists' demands fanatical and pointed to a plethora of evidence suggesting that nihilism, narcissism and feelings of personal inadequacy are prime motives.

But nihilism, narcissism and personal inadequacy alone don't explain why climate activists chose to throw tantrums. After all, the greatest protest movements of all time have used far more mature and dignified tactics. Think of Gandhi's Salt March, Martin Luther King's Montgomery bus boycott or Greenpeace's anti-whaling protests.

While protesters in the past have demanded to be treated like adults, today's climate protesters are demanding to be treated like children. Civil rights activists in the 1950s sat at the takeaways demanding to be treated like adults. Remarkably, it was racist counter-protesters who showered them with milkshakes. Today, it's the protesters who are spilling milk and throwing food.

Why is it like that? Why have leftist activists reversed their tactics? The participants in the protests are obviously dignified people themselves. Grimalda is an economist and works at the Kiel Institute for World Economy. He has published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Nature Communications and other prestigious publications. So why is he and his colleagues acting like little kids?