When 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg became Time Magazine’s youngest ever Person of the Year, it took less than 24 hours for President Donald Trump to criticize the selection. With the Trump administration’s strict curtailment of environmental protection measures and encouragement of harmful industrial practices, it comes as no surprise that the president disapproved of the decision. The dystopian Twitter exchange culminated with Thunberg altering her biography on the site to mockingly state that she was embracing the president’s call for her to “work on her Anger Management problem.” While the interaction could be seen as a simple demonstration of the president’s narcissism and irrationality, it is also emblematic of the wide division in generational views on climate change. While the youth have always felt the immediacy of climate change, older generations continue to brush the issue aside and paint their younger counterparts as foolish and naive. This generational climate gap has massive implications that reach beyond the Twittersphere and into all areas of climate advocacy, from college campuses to Congress.
The Climate Gap On Campus
The divestment debate serves as a helpful microcosm for examining the policy effects of the climate gap: an impassioned youth movement striving to initiate change in climate policy, stifled by a governing body consisting of older decision makers. The divestment movement, an international campaign urging institutions to remove investments from the fossil fuel sector, has taken center stage at Harvard University.
Despite years of student activism for fossil fuel divestment, Harvard has failed to take action to defend the future its students will inherit. In 2012, Harvard became the first university to have a student body pass a referendum in favor of fossil fuel divestment. Yet, following another 2019 referendum with 69.3% student support and a faculty vote for divestment by a margin of 179-20, Harvard has still yet to take action on the issue. In an op-ed, Harvard President Larry Bacow summarized the university’s position that “engaging with industry to confront the challenge of climate change is ultimately a sounder and more effective approach for our university.” There lies a deep incongruence in Harvard’s efforts to become carbon neutral and support research to find climate solutions while also supporting the industry which has misled the public about the crisis it created.
How can the university simultaneously claim to care for the future of its student body while stingily retaining its investments in the very industry that poses the greatest threat to our futures? The answer might lie in the generational climate gap. By averaging the ages of current Harvard Corporation board members, we can see that the average age of the individuals who choose where to invest Harvard’s $40+ billion endowment is 65. These individuals will not witness the worst ravages of climate change. They are content to pursue the conservative approach modeled by their predecessors, one that placed the world in its current crisis and is at odds with the stance of the younger student body and faculty. This conservative stance of the older generation is defined by a fundamental misunderstanding of the magnitude of the climate crisis. The status quo is not sufficient to deal with climate change, and retaining investments in companies that are actively worsening the situation shows a lack of concern for the problem. Activists have begun to take steps to elect pro-divest candidates on the Board of Overseers, but as of now, the voices of younger generations calling for action still go unaddressed.
The Climate Gap in Global Politics
The state of modern global politics — from the growing international influence of the far right to the election and policies of Donald Trump — are also heavily affected by this climate gap. While 51% of millennials and Generation Z members believe that climate change is a serious threat, only 29% of those 55 and up hold the same view. This major difference is all the more significant in the context of lower voter turnout among younger generations. Around 60% of those aged 45 and up voted in the 2018 elections, compared to 35.6% of millenials; these disparities in voter turnout disproportionately emphasize the voices of older generations and minimize those of the youth. This contributed to the presidential victory of Donald Trump, whose retrograde stance on climate lost him the youth vote despite his victory in the overall election — young people just did not come out to the polls enough to turn the tide towards Clinton. The failure of the youth vote to elect a pro-climate candidate has had disastrous consequences in the form of the Trump administration, which has weakened or cut regulations on coal and natural gas, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, and actively suppressed the EPA’s findings on climate change.
Younger generations necessarily have a greater sense of urgency — for us, the sky has always been falling. Accusations of alarmism and fear mongering by older generations reveal a distinct ignorance of the scale of this global emergency. The complacency of politicians and older generations, who will not have to face the brunt of this crisis, has resulted in stagnant policy and insufficient action in the face of powerful special interests. However, this trend is slowly adjusting its course due to younger generations that are just now beginning to assert their political clout. Greta Thunberg is one such youth who has worked to create change by igniting the desire among younger generations to advocate for protective climate policy. Regardless of bad faith critiques of her movement, conservatives have implicitly acknowledged the power of global youth activism by creating an “anti-Greta Thunberg” — German teen Naomi Seibt — who is leading a campaign against climate science and policy reform to try to offset Thunberg. Despite their accusations of Thunberg’s “alarmism” and inexperience, conservatives appear to have no qualms about mimicking the methods that have led to her global success.
What has become apparent is that without a sufficient push in the right direction, politicians around the world will not take decisive action towards guaranteeing a safe future for coming generations. This is evidenced by the failure of nations around the world to meet the relatively conservative emissions goals set out in the Paris Climate Accords and the continued brazen disinformation campaigns led by the fossil fuel industry that remain unchecked or even supported by most governments. Younger generations must make their voices heard before it is too late. We have to march, vote, and protest for climate justice, or the status quo will remain — the establishment will keep choosing profits over people until the world is uninhabitable.
Image Credit: “#youthClimateStrike March 15, 2019 Morristown, NJ” by lo.ags is licensed under CC BY 2.0