Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg has triggered conservatives to the point where they have called her “mentally ill” on national television, and compared her to “Children of the Corn” and Nazi propaganda. Even the president of the United States resorted to mocking her on Twitter after she spoke to world leaders at the United Nations session on climate change.

That’s quite a reaction to a teenage activist trying to save the environment from catastrophic harm.

Perhaps they don’t realize that their attacks only make her message more powerful with the young people she’s inspiring.

Milo Marsten, an 11-year-old in St. Louis, missed school to attend a climate strike protest last week.

“I think she’s amazing,” he said. “She’s speaking the truth. She’s convincing people to do things. She organized an absolutely massive climate strike around the world.”

Milo became interested in environmental science when he was 7 or 8. Over the years, he’s prompted his parents to become more engaged with these issues and re-evaluate their choices. His advocacy at home has prompted discussions about reducing their household waste, evaluating whether new purchases are truly necessary, and even opting to buy a hybrid when they needed a new car. He takes note of the environmental practices of the companies they buy from, said his mother, Amanda Doyle.

“He does make me think more about that stuff instead of being so resigned to it,” Doyle said.

Milo believes in the power of individuals to help bring about change. “Certainly it has a lot to do with the people in power’s decisions,” he said. But, “we need a lot of people to make the small decisions. We can slowly change how we act and how producers of goods act.”

That’s an 11-year-old, remember.

Still, he also believes individual actions will not be enough to stem the impending climate crisis.

“I think it will take a lot of direct structural change, like the Green New Deal,” he said.

Greta spoke to these same concerns when she implored world leaders to take action.

“People are suffering. People are dying,” she said at the U.N.’s Climate Summit. “Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she said, fighting back tears. “How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”

It’s jarring -- but also hopeful -- to see young people speak more passionately and intelligently about climate science and policy implications than some of the adults in charge of making these decisions.

Milo brought up the president’s past tweets about freezing cold winters in an attempt to discredit the fact that the Earth is warming. He took a deep sigh and spelled it out like you might for a 5-year-old.

“Weather,” Milo said. “That’s weather.”

It’s not the same thing as climate change, on which scientists have near universal agreement.

I asked him if this is the biggest issue facing his generation, and he paused a moment before answering.

“There are a lot of issues -- like poverty, not everyone has access to things, and we are under kind of a corrupt government. But if we keep releasing this ever-increasing amount of carbon into the air, all that’s not going to matter,” he said.

It’s something that kids as young as elementary school have started to accept.

“In fact, I have never met a kid who does not believe this is an issue,” Milo said.

The adults attacking Greta might naively believe they can scare her -- or other children -- into silence.

They might want to take note of her response. She took the president’s mocking description of her and made it into her Twitter bio: “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

These kids aren’t afraid.

The email arrived like a temptation.

An invitation seducing me to take part in a questionable game. I quashed my misgivings and filled out the form from my alma mater, noting that I have a child who might apply as a legacy.

Studies have shown what everyone knows to be true: Students who apply to colleges that a family member attended have an unearned advantage over those who don’t. It can be used as a tie-breaker when deciding between two well-qualified applicants, or it can add additional points to an application. A handful of elite institutions -- MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and UC Berkeley -- do not consider legacy as part of admissions, but the vast majority of American colleges do.

Legacy preferences were originally designed to favor white, Protestant men at the expense of Jewish and immigrant applicants who scored higher on entrance exams in greater numbers. And to this day, studies show that the people who benefit from this boost the most are the ones who need it the least. The New York Times editorial board recently described it as affirmative action for the wealthy.

Universities defend the practice because they say it increases alumni donations and engagement with the institution in the long term. It’s almost funny to hear universities with billion-dollar-plus endowments defend a system of privilege because it ensures their own wealth. Plus, there is research that disputes that very claim. If Oxford, Cambridge and MIT do not need to rely on legacy preferences to maintain their world-class status, what does that say about Harvard, Yale and all the other elite institutions who feel compelled to hang on to it?

In reality, colleges and universities will not willingly dismantle legacy preferences simply because they know it would upset too many alumni. Some parents believe that their commitment and relationship to an institution merits bonus points for their child. It’s unclear why a parent’s love or devotion or financial support for anything should translate to her child being entitled to any special consideration for it. In the case of access to higher education, all it does is perpetuate the inequalities built into a rigged system.

Unlike becoming an exceptional athlete or musician or student, being born to parents who attended a particular school required nothing of the student.

I say this while admitting that I was not willing to unilaterally disarm in the current admissions arms race. But if my college or graduate school asked in an alumni survey if I would favor eliminating such consideration entirely from their admissions process, I would support getting rid of it for everyone.

Part of the reason families might be unlikely to give up this advantage for their children is because of how competitive and unaffordable higher education has become in the past few decades. There’s no way I would be accepted to the graduate school I attended under today’s admissions standards. And the current costs at these same places would have put them completely out of reach for me back then, even when adjusted for inflation.

Most middle-class families worry about being able to afford college for their children, and higher education is increasingly seen as a prerequisite to surviving in the global economy. The parental anxiety about securing your child’s place in the middle class or maintaining a place in the upper class may be too great.

Equality is great in theory -- until it impacts your own privilege.

And, interestingly, the public debate about eliminating legacy preferences is gaining steam at the exact moment when historically underrepresented groups might finally benefit from it.

It would be fascinating to see current survey data on how many alumni would support ending legacy preferences at their own institutions. Is there an overlap among those who rally against affirmative action programs yet support legacy preferences?

Don’t expect to see colleges asking their alumni these questions anytime soon.

They may not want to hear the answers.

The double stroller inevitably found itself under scrutiny again.

In the fervor of another garage clean-up, my husband set his sights on the folded 12-wheeler idling in a cluttered corner. It’s been unused for at least a dozen years.

“Are you ready to give it away yet?” he asked.

I made a noncommittal sound, avoiding a direct answer. We’ve had this discussion before. I’ve let go of every other physical reminder of the kids’ younger years -- cribs, high chairs, bassinets, Pack ‘n Plays -- that mammoth mountain of stuff that takes over your house when you have a baby.

But I have irrationally held on to this artifact well into my kids’ teen years. It passes the Marie Kondo test: The thought of it still sparks joy. This is the gadget that allowed me to leave the house on my own with a baby and toddler. It was a symbol of my limited freedom at a time when getting out of the house was supremely difficult. It carried the stories of our small adventures, when I could navigate the streets with more confidence than I was navigating challenges inside the home. It transported us through airports, malls, zoos and parks.

The babies sat in that stroller the first time they saw a polar bear. When we shopped for tiny shoes they quickly outgrew. They took naps, licked ice cream cones and rode countless elevators in that contraption that took up half the space in my trunk. We never used the other parenting paraphernalia much; they never slept in cribs or played in playpens. But we put hundreds of miles on that stroller.

I suggested to my husband that perhaps we needed to hang on to it for when my brother and sister-in-law visit with their daughters, an infant and a preschooler. He seemed skeptical, shrugged and moved on. But the guilt of my hoarding got to me, so I wisely turned to the internet as a way to punish myself.

I asked on Twitter if I was wrong in wanting to keep the stroller. The wisdom of the Twitterverse confirmed that I was indeed in the wrong. One person helpfully suggested that perhaps I could donate it to the four children who had been recently rescued from a burning St. Louis apartment. Duly shamed, I agreed this would be a far better use than having it collect dust.

I reached out to alderwoman Christine Ingrassia, who had posted a list of the children’s needs. We agreed to meet the next day, so I could hand this beloved vehicle over.

This meant I needed to get rid of the accumulated dust, so I started digging through the leftovers that had survived the garage purge. But I couldn’t find the stroller. I texted my husband at work.

He directed me to a small pile, where I made a startling discovery: This wasn’t the heavy-duty Graco DuoGlider I remembered. That was our luxury stroller -- which cost a fraction of what would be considered luxe by today’s standards. Nowadays, a high-end Bugaboo double stroller will set you back more than $2,000.

My husband’s first car, a 1972 Mercury Marquis, cost $600.

No, what I found wasn’t our “fancy” double stroller. It was the cheaper Kolcraft umbrella double. Apparently, I had agreed to give the behemoth away a few years ago.

You might be getting older when you can’t even keep track of your precious memorabilia.

Well, this durable riding machine was more practical anyway, I thought. It was lighter and took up less space. I started hosing it down and realized one seat was covered in a blue stain where a pen must have exploded or marker leaked. The overhead canopy on one side was missing. I unearthed a mangled plastic sippy cup from the storage bag behind the seat. It contained a petrified liquid of unknown origin.

There was no way I could donate this beat-up jalopy. I texted Ingrassia and explained that I hadn’t been aware of the current condition of the stroller when I offered it. She said not to worry: A generous person offered to buy the family a new double stroller that same day.

God bless Good Samaritans.

The Kolcraft double stroller, now cleaned up, has been folded back into its spot in the corner.

It’s ready for my nieces whenever they visit.