I have a couple of Twitter accounts (it’s sad – I’m addicted). On one account I’m me – that is, snarky, snide, ironic, very progressive, not always polite. On the other I’m a bit of a Pollyanna, very polite and earnest, and I only tweet about climate change. I’m careful to keep my tone civil, because from there I tweet to politicians like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, asking them to “be intellectually honest” about climate change, sending them informative links, and so forth. Let me go on the record as saying that I am 99.9999% certain that all of this is a lost cause, but tweeting feels like SOMETHING, at least – as does writing diaries here.
And now I want to get something off my mono-bosom. I am officially OVER the tweets about “millennials leading the charge” and “young voices for climate action!” When it comes to climate change, I am DONE with the starry-eyed gazing into some fanciful “progressive future” that may or may not come to pass. I have HAD IT with tweets lauding “young speakers at the UN telling the story of a new generation!” and why? Because frankly it’s all a bunch of pass-the-buck irresponsible twaddle.
Couple of points here (below the fold).
1) The people who are currently in power are not millennials. There aren’t any 24 year old senators, to my knowledge. We’re electing a new president next year, and that person is likely to be in late middle age, or older. Hillary Clinton is 67, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are older! (Please note pointed failure to include a Republican in that list. Feh. They're toast.)
The “leaders of the free world” currently in power aren’t millennials, either. Xi Jinping is 62. Stephen Harper is 56. Angela Merkel is 61. Pope Francis is seventy-freaking-eight.
And those are the folks who need to get their asses in gear and prioritize climate change (well, except for the Pope – he’s on board). Those are the people who must jump start government programs to set immediate, strict limits on carbon; throw money at R&D for new tech solutions; put people to work shoring up infrastructure; make plans for the migration from coastal cities that will assuredly be needed, etc., etc. (you know the drill).
It’s all well and good to have children speechify at them, but they are in power right now, and they need to ACT. We can’t wait.
2) Like it or not, climate change affects EVERYONE, and will do so increasingly even if we do take decisive action right now.
I’m An Old. I was born in the 1960s, and am an elderly member of Gen X. People in my family live a very long time – routinely into their late 80s and some well past that – so I have a reasonable expectation of living another 35 or 40 years. And I’m selfish.
I don’t want to spend my dotage wading through toxic bilge water! I don’t want to be loading my walker into the buggy every other week to flee yet another savage wildfire. I don’t want to be hunkered down in the basement with a rifle and a pallet of canned tuna, waiting for the ravening hordes of climate change refugees from Manhattan and Savannah to come swarming over the horizon.
So yeah, people under 35 are more likely to be on board with the fact of climate change as an active, real, emergent crisis. But people over 35, for better or for worse, still hold the reins of power – AND are going to live long enough to be more and more personally affected by the consequences of our warming planet. Which means that now is the time to stop getting all misty-eyed about how “the children are our future” and get out there and do the hard work.