What must it be like to be Greta Thunberg? To be, at 19 years of age, the most recognised climate crisis campaigner in the world, shouldering the burden of averting – or at this late stage, merely softening – the biggest calamity humanity has ever faced? What can that possibly feel like?
At the end of Amol Rajan Interviews Greta Thunberg (BBC Two), the conversation becomes more personal and we get a few answers: how Thunberg doesn’t enjoy being stopped in the street and certainly doesn’t appreciate threats to her family; how she despairs at being told her presence reassures people about the future of the planet, because it implies they are outsourcing their individual responsibility to her.
