Piers Morgan says climate activist Greta Thunberg is 'psychologically damaged' but wants Trump to start taking her seriously
While Piers Morgan is known for his controversial and inflammatory opinions, he took a level-handed stance against the frenzy currently surrounding teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg.
Thunberg's impassioned speech at the UN general assembly this week where she lambasted world leaders and elected officials for continuing to ignore the looming threat of climate change captured headlines around the globe, and while Morgan admitted part of him "loves Greta," he finds himself in two minds about her.
"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing," Greta thundered in her speech, seemingly holding back tears of anger. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth."
"How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe."
Morgan conceded that the issues she raised were worth fighting for, but said he found her speech an "uncomfortable viewing", taking issue, in particular, with the fact that she had claimed her Asperger's was a "superpower".
"It’s a developmental disorder characterized by profound difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication," he said. "It can cause those who have it to develop an 'intense preoccupation with a narrow subject' and 'one-sided verbosity.'"
"On the science, I agree with her: climate change is a very real and present threat and our world leaders must all do more to combat it," he continued. "But her end-of-the-world-is-nigh ranting rhetoric is terrifying millions of young people to an extent that eco-anxiety is massively increasing as a stress disorder."
He said her year of campaigning had made her come across as "extremely vulnerable, emotionally unstable, and possibly psychologically damaged" and that she "looks miserable, terrified, vulnerable and lonely; a teenage girl on the spectrum who can’t deal with what is exploding around her".
Morgan also addressed President Donald Trump, who has consistently claimed that climate change as a hoax, throwing shade at the 16-year-old after her speech at the UN. "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future," he tweeted sarcastically. "So nice to see!"
The 'Good Morning Britain' host said Trump had made a point in his "usual ham-fisted way" but that "many of our most powerful politicians, led by President Trump, are "undeniably failing to take it seriously enough".
"Trump may not be a climate change denier, but he’s certainly a skeptic, and the world needs less skepticism about it and more cold hard realism – fast," he added.