On November 12, young Greta Thunberg set sail from America to Europe.  But not in the same way she arrived, and you’ll hear few people mention that.

Back in August, much was made of her trip to America.  She “doesn’t fly because of the outsize greenhouse gas emissions from aviation,” the New York Times reports.  So, she sailed to America on a very environmentally-friendly racing yacht instead. 

It was reported that the cost of that entire voyage from England to America that she began back in August “has not been calculated.”  That’s not true, of course.  Somebody has certainly calculated and paid the cost that was incurred.  What is meant by that statement is that the total cost is not being disclosed to the public.  But it doesn’t take much digging to discover that it’s outside the realm of attainment for the common person who wishes to traverse the Atlantic.  That vessel alone costs more than $4.1 million, and this doesn’t include the cost of employing the two skippers, a cameraman, food, time away from work, etc.

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On the way home on November 12, however, she hitched a more comfortable ride with “an Australian couple that sails around the world in a 48-foot catamaran called La Vagabonde and chronicles their travels on YouTube,” according the Times.  It’s hard to imagine that she hasn’t enjoyed this experience or her newfound fame, given that we have evidence that she was dancing the nights away to amuse her adoring fans.

But here’s another funny little thing you might not hear often.  The skipper of the yacht she took home erased whatever carbon output Greta hoped to save.

According to The Daily Mail, Nikki Henderson flew from Britain to America in order to be the skipper bringing her home on the yacht, thus nullifying the carbon-cost of Greta Thunberg simply taking a flight home, which might have allowed her to get home sooner and back to her studies more promptly.

But in perhaps the most ironic ending imaginable to this story of Greta’s travels, which somehow won her the honor of being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, she found herself in Germany on December 14, more than a month after her departure from America.  And she seemingly laments having to travel on “overcrowded trains through Germany,” despite being excited to be finally near her home.

It would be hard for any statement to more aptly capture her circumstantial distance from the common person.  She and her radical environmentalist cohorts would have us all corralled into high-speed rail as a means of environmentally-friendly transportation, and yet she seems somewhat bothered by having to travel on those “overcrowded” trains in Germany. 

Of course, not everyone has millions of dollars to purchase such an environmentally-friendly yacht and a crew, or the newfound fame needed to incentivize a yacht skipper to hop a flight from the U.K. to America in order to “help… support Greta because she is changing the world.” And the number of people who have the luxury of that kind of time to be away from school or work in order to fulfill some abstract ideological crusade is small, indeed.  A voyage like hers is entirely impractical for common people, but what’s worse is that the suggestion behind the voyage is entirely destructive toward the system of commerce and leisure travel that common people are able to enjoy today, thanks to the miracles of the free market system.

To fully highlight the contrast between Greta’s fantastic voyage and the opportunities that the free market has created for the common person, consider that Greta could have purchased a one-way ticket from New York City to Stockholm leaving on December 23 for just over $700 to get home in 17 or so hours.  Or, she could spring for a $2,300 nonstop ticket to get there in just seven hours and forty-five minutes.  And that was just my first search on a travel app, with this very short notice, at a notoriously expensive time to fly due to demand for flights in the holiday season.  I have no doubt that cheaper fares could be found for the frugal traveler.

Greta’s alternative voyage, however, is a perfect representation of the socialist’s utopian dreamworld, complete with blind idealism, an utter lack of efficiency, and the gargantuan costs (which no one ever seems eager to disclose) in order to achieve it.  That simple airplane ticket, on the other hand, is representative of the incredible efficiency and cost effectiveness of the free market.  The contrast between the two worldviews could not be more vividly drawn.

And yet, here’s another contrast.  While young Greta has been out at sea doing the yeoman’s work of selling anti-free market global warming alarmism, Barack Obama last week purchased a nearly $12 million dollar mansion which rests just above sea level on Martha’s Vineyard which, according to some extreme projections, will be well-underwater by the year 2100.

So, here we have a young socialist in her multimillion-dollar yachts traversing the Atlantic while telling the rest of us how we should live.  We have an older socialist who believes so firmly in the dire predictions of global warming alarmism that he bought a multi-million-dollar mansion by the sea which might be swallowed by the ocean in in the coming decades if the alarmists’ predictions that he peddles as fact are actually proven correct.  And both claim that our salvation can only be delivered if we adopt a form of global socialism to destroy the energy and economic infrastructure which fuels our free markets that have made life so much better for so many ordinary people.

Is it any wonder that Trump won an election in 2016 while promising to leave the Paris Accords that Obama agreed to?  Is it any wonder that the United Kingdom just voted to sever itself from that globalist vision with furious gusto?  And will it be any wonder if, when American voters go to the polls in 2020, they emphatically reject the supposedly noble premise behind the supposedly bold and brave “climate change” charade that was young Greta Thunberg’s voyage to America in 2019?