New Zealand Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick was speaking to the New Zealand Parliament. Her speech was an attempt to outline the fundamental need to change the business-as-usual narrative when it comes to climate change, and what needs to be done by nations all over the world. Swarbrick is 25 years old and represents a new generation of politicians who can see that there is no more road down which the proverbial can of political expediency can be kicked. So that is how she began her speech:
MP SWARBRICK: We are in a climate crisis. If we don't get this right nothing else matters. In the year 2050 I will be 56 years old, yet right now the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old.
The room, hearing themselves called out for being exactly how old they are, began to titter and some old windbag decided to begin heckling Swarbrick. Without missing a beat, she dropped this millennial term, used to dismiss (usually) baby boom generation condescension aimed at the younger generations.
SWARBRICK: Okay, boomer.
The room goes silent, in part because most of these folks have probably never heard “Okay, boomer” used in any context, or been condescended to in such a dismissive way. The “OK boomer” meme is something that took off on the social media platform TikTok, with short clips of Generation Z and millennials using the term to explain why the baby boom generation’s slandering of younger folks is hypocritical at best, and false most of the time
Swarbrick is busy saying serious stuff though, and continues on without further incident.
SWARBRICK: Current political institutions have proven themselves incompetent, and thinking outside at a short political term. Change is so regularly sacrificed for power. Slogans are easy but this stuff this action is hard climate action cannot be sacrificed anymore for political convenience climate change is a deeply inconvenient truth, and Mr. Speaker, if climate action is indeed our nuclear-free moment, it should be and it must be transformational.
Swarbrick’s deft handling of the political heckler went viral and she posted this equally skilled response to naysayers on her Facebook page.
Today I have learnt that responding succinctly and in perfect jest to somebody heckling you about *your age* as you speak about the impact of climate change on *your generation* with the literal title of their generation makes some people very mad.
So I guess millennials ruined humour. That, or we just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and abstain from avocados.
That’s the joke.
Amen. When it comes to climate change and the new generations, you’d better be a part of the solution, folks—or get out of the way.