After a week outside a conference centre in Glasgow, swearing and being fawned over by BBC journalists, Greta Thunberg made one good point, says Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times. She said there was no point listening to “whatever the f*** the Cop26 politicians were saying inside”, because everyone outside already knows what needs doing. “Absolutely.” I know I shouldn’t buy palm oil or plastic packaging, and if my journey’s less than a mile I should walk. Lecturing me is pointless. What I’d like to see is Greta in Beijing, standing outside the Forbidden City with “her parka and her Glastonbury backpack”, lecturing the Chinese Communist Party about coal and trees.
Billions of tons of carbon pour into the skies from China – and India, where millions cook supper over wood-burning stoves, blanketing the sky with toxic fog. But not a single “hairy person in Liberal Democrat shoes” is over there with a placard. Why don’t they protest in countries where it might do some good? Because they’re “timid and wet”, and Chinese news crews wouldn’t treat them with the “respect and reverence” they get over here. Gandhi and Mandela were prepared to undergo “unimaginable hardships” to further the causes in which they believed. Greta and her gang went to Glasgow to bathe in adulation. I suppose it beats getting sent to a labour camp.