THE science behind climate change is simple and undeniable. The world is heating up, putting lifeforms at risk and must be cooled down by reducing the amount of carbon emissions going into the atmosphere. Simples.

However, the science behind the rise of environmental activism is less straightforward and, like a pond in a ravaged forest, slightly murky.

In recent times, there has been a rise in the number of pupil activists who have started staging a series of strikes outside schools to highlight the climate emergency.

At the forefront is 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg who has been hailed as the world’s saviour by some, while others resort to death threats on Twitter. Yes, a teenage girl receiving threats because she wants to help save the planet. You couldn’t make it up.

But I cannot be alone in feeling growing unease at her being increasingly wheeled out across the world to lecture governments about what they already know. She appears to be the new Bono, but 25 years younger.

Greta is currently heading across the Atlantic on a racing yacht with a member of the Monagesque Royal family where she will attend climate change conferences in New York and Chile.

However, it is now a legitimate time for everyone to ask who is really behind Greta and what are their motives? No ordinary teenage girl, as it claimed she is, can simply hitch a lift to the States with the son of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

There are suggestions the ‘Greta phenomenon’ involves powerful green lobbyists and a think tank founded by a wealthy former minister in Sweden’s Social Democratic government who has links to the country’s energy companies, preparing for the biggest bonanza of government contracts in history as western economies turn greener.

I have no reason to doubt Greta’s genuinely held beliefs as they are similar to millions of other teenage girls across the western world who, instead, have to make do with standing outside a school, imploring people to listen.

But there is a growing suspicion that Greta is being exploited. She has Asperger’s which makes her vulnerable and all vulnerable young adults need protected and not thrust into the spotlight. The fight against climate change is too important and involves too many people to irrevocably harm a well-meaning teenager.

The climate has changed and threatens us all because the earth has been exploited for greed and money. It would be the biggest tragedy of all if the fight to save it was just the same.