The extremist rhetoric of the Extinction Rebellion movement is quite divorced from factual evidence, science and reason. By telling children that they have no future, they're guilty of child abuse, and it has a body count: today's youth is the most depressed and suicidal generation ever.

Imagine going to school one day, and instead of being asked what you want to be when you grow up, you are asked what you're going to do if you grow up.

That they might not have a future at all, and certainly not a "normal" one like their parents had, was the message of Extinction Rebellion activist Rupert Read, speaking to "a huge audience of schoolchildren at the Green Schools project", during the Schools Climate Conference held at University College, London, earlier this year.

Ever since the hippie movement of the 1960s, every generation has produced its rebels, clamouring to overthrow the establishment and fighting for environmental and other social justice causes. Every generation has good cause: they see pollution, corruption, war, poverty and hunger, as well as a conservative, complacent society, and they want something to be done about it.

That this generation lives in the most peaceful, prosperous, and generally awesome...