Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg was invited to the French parliament this week but received heavy criticism from some right-wing lawmakers.
MPs Guillaume Larrivé and Julien Aubert of the conservative Republicans called for a boycott of the Swedish activist, labelling her a “prophetess in shorts”, Le Figaro reports.
“To fight climate change intelligently, we do not need apocalyptic gurus, but scientific progress and political courage,” Mr Larrivé said.
“We are invited to a prediction of Saint Greta Thunberg, surrounded by people who see global warming as a religion,” Mr Aubert told Le Figaro and added that Thunberg had no qualifications and used only emotive arguments, saying there was no debate to be had.
Sébastien Chenu, a member of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, also slammed the invite saying: “She has no legitimacy other than media, I do not see why I would go prostrate before her.”
“She is a committed young woman, but she brings nothing to the debate, and is not enough to mask all the hypocrisy of the government. The members of the National Rally will not take part in this masquerade,” he added.
National Rally MEP Jordan Baredella, who led the party to election victory in the European Parliament elections in May, labelled Thunberg’s movement “a new form of totalitarianism”.
“This dictatorship of permanent emotion, moreover when it is based on children, is a new form of totalitarianism. It is beyond ridiculous,” he said.
Thunberg has travelled across Europe for months visiting various heads of government and even joined a climate change protest in the German capital of Berlin earlier this month.
While many in the media have praised Thunberg, Breitbart News’s James Delingpole wrote in February that her alarmist rhetoric was “exactly the kind half-baked, ill-informed, emotive, unscientific and utterly impractical tosh you’d expect to hear from a brainwashed 16-year old schoolgirl”.
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