The RSC should ignore the climate change mob and stick with BP

It is often said that Western culture worships youth. Yet this cult of youth worship has started to mutate into something a bit weirder, as it increasingly seems that ours is a society that now worships children. This year, for instance, has seen the rise to global ascendency of the 16-year-old Swede, Greta Thunberg. She has become the child-saint icon of the environmental movement, whose apocalyptic scorn is fawned over by liberal politicians and woke-conscious big business.

Her teenage acolytes bunk school, with the blessing of their teachers, to raise awareness as to the plight of climate change. Elsewhere, we are told that it is imperative to hold a second Brexit referendum ‘for the sake of the children’ (and even, to make the point clearer, ‘our children’s children’). And in the latest development, it was announced this week that the Royal Shakespeare Company is to sever its links with its sponsor BP, thanks to a mass boycott by teenage climate change protesters.

The long-running anti-BP campaign was given a boost last week when students organised a school strike against climate change, asking their teachers and heads to end trips to RSC events, because BP ‘is actively destroying our futures by wrecking the climate.’