Greta Thunberg's Credibility to Speak about Climate Change: Her Youth Is a Big Plus. Maybe We'll Listen.

Credibility, Theodore Clevenger and my former persuasion professor Kenneth Andersen explained, has three main factors: expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism. No sixteen-year old can be an expert in climate science. So what makes Greta Thunberg so persuasive?

Climate Change and Storms

Sixteen year-old Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist, has been touring European parliaments to talk about climate change. She is making quite a splash. Her articulate speeches review the accepted scientific evidence about climate change, point out the tremendous power of big money in spreading anti-science propaganda, and plead for dramatic action. Her central point is to focus on nations' responsibility to protect their children's future. Her April 2019 speech to the British Parliament ended like this:

"We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.

"We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back."

I'll spare you the vicious personal counter-attacks that some conservatives have used to rail against her. Not everyone finds Thunberg credible because not everyone wants to believe her message. And, yes, some people tell her to go away because they think she's too young.

She is, however, credible to people who are willing to listen because:

1. Climate science isn't being debated in scientific circles. On the contrary, media pundits, energy companies, and conservative politicians have created a dispute out of thin air. The debate about global warming is not a scientific debate; as long as we find science itself credible, we can find Thunberg credible. That's why she doesn't need to be an expert. The experts came before her.

2. Her speech delivery was varied, personable, and interesting, but she wasn't loud or frantic. She sounded calm but emotional. Her occasional hesitancy just reinforced her youth. 

3. Thunberg's point was that the future belongs to the young. A teenager pleading for her generation's future has special poignancy. She is pleading for herself.

I find it ironic that conservative politicians care so much about the children who are unborn, but seem to care much less about children who have already been born. Why is that? 

Most of the time, a speaker who is too young loses credibility. But Thunberg's youth gained her credibility. People are listening to her. Maybe she will make a difference. 

P.S. Over the years, I had several students who had Asperger Syndrome. They were some of the finest public speaking students I ever taught. Never think that a label defines you. 

Image: National Park Service