Gone are the days when TIME chose adult men, like Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill as the magazine’s person of the year (Adolf Hitler too – the award is for the most influential, not necessarily the most virtuous public figure). These days the accent is on youth, and Greta Thunberg personifies the much acclaimed ‘wisdom of the child’. That is why three Norwegian MPs nominated Thunberg for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

Throughout the Western world the authority of adulthood is in crisis. Adulthood is increasingly associated with negative attributes and grown ups feel less and less able to provide guidance to young people. The flip side of the erosion of adult authority is the tendency to look to young people for solutions and answers. That is why Western society’s depreciation of adulthood coexists with adulation of the supposed wisdom of children.

Arguably the most grotesque manifestation of this trend is the spectacle of politicians and dignitaries intently listening to Greta at high profile international meetings. A thunderous standing ovation is guaranteed by the mere appearance of this symbol of an infantilised political culture. The theme of adult irresponsibility has been her most common refrain – appearing in her lecture to the United Nations climate change summit as far back as a year ago, and in every major speech she has made this year.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” she said last December. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with.”