Greta Thunberg is a figurehead being used by climate alarmists and environmental evangelists for a purpose that will ultimately fail.

That purpose is to suck the public into an emotional vortex. One that is powerful enough for eco-warriors to implement a radical agenda for addressing climate change. They hope to limit environmental impact from human activity. That agenda is predicated on the notion that economic damage is irrelevant and should not be taken into account as the situation is dire.

This strategy will certainly work to some degree initially. The emotive imagery of a sixteen-year-old girl terrified of the future substitutes for the issue itself. In a case of classic emotional blackmail, it dares people to disagree, not just with the issue but with her personally.

When they do disagree, rather than simple accusations of environmental negligence, dissenters and critics are accused of being shamefully and callously abusive towards the feelings of a scared girl. Worse still, they are dared to deny her claimed superior intelligence - supposedly demonstrated in her angry outbursts.

This process stirs up a sentiment tsunami that mainstream media finds highly profitable. There's no doubt Greta is worth a fortune to them in advertising revenue. She is the media's current darling and a heroine messiah of the political left.

However, after the initial burst of energy all tsunamis lose steam and fizzle out.

This strategy will work right up to the point where people who got carried away suddenly realise what 'economic damage is irrelevant' actually means. When it occurs to the masses that it is not some far-off nebulous principle, that it's actually their jobs that are threatened, their livelihoods and standards of living that are going to suffer, the mood will change.

Reality will then hit home to those who were roped-in, to those who simply went along with the latest trend and those who were intimidated or browbeaten into jumping on board. There will be a rude awakening.

Mainstream media will then end their love affair with young Greta. Instead, they will begin highlighting the fears of people who are about to lose their jobs and possibly even their homes through aggressive climate action. Media bosses will give the strongest voice to people who question the necessity of hot-headed, destructive tearing-down mentalities. The narrative will change, insisting instead that remedies could have been found to fix climate change without hurting the economy. In countries that control their media, people in charge are already doing that.

In reality, the last thing media owners and investors want is an economic down-turn. They don't want recessions, let alone global economic collapse. That's because their own bottom lines, which are highly dependent on advertising revenue, would suffer badly. And after all, those owners are capitalists.

In fixing climate change as with all things, cooler heads will prevail. Hotheads like young Greta will fail.