Why Baby Boomers Dont Care About Global Warming

Boomers: Information technology'due south non too late. You can be heroes in the story of climate change.

You might not similar to hear it, equally many of y'all take long told pollsters you consider yourselves environmentalists, just collectively you accept exacerbated the climate crisis more than than any other generation.

Fossil fuels were cheap as you lot came of historic period and yous burned too much of them. Your lifetime carbon footprint is so loftier you're forcing kids born today to emit eight times less than you lot just to hit a modest goal. And y'all've never taken climate alter as seriously as the generations behind yous.

Your generation put yourselves before the rest of us. As economics reporter Jim Tankersley has written time and again, "At nearly every point in their lives, these Americans chose to slough the costs of those tax cuts and spending hikes onto time to come generations." So instead of investing in cleaner energy sources or preparing for a less-stable environmental future during good economic times, you passed on problems.

The future generations are coming of age themselves. Your grandchildren are leading a movement calling for large change. Time'southward Person of the Year in 2019 was Greta Thunberg, a teenage climate activist who has become a voice of moral clarity for Gen Z and millennials. Her rallying cry has been heard around the globe, inspiring millions (of all ages) to protest and demand that leaders prioritize the planet.

Just for all the successes millennials and Gen Zers accept had in making their crusade a cultural phenomenon, they do non have enough of what they really need and what y'all do: political power.

An exhausted CFA crew member lies on the ground after a mean solar day of maintaining controlled back burns in St. Albans, Australia, on November 21, 2019.

Brett Hemmings/Getty Images

As Australia burns and the Trump administration stymies international collaboration and bails out the coal manufacture, yous take a run a risk to redefine your generation and save the 24-hour interval. You lot've already proven you lot are a generation that can evolve. You inverse your views on social values and are far more similar to millennials than your parents. It's non too tardily to practice the same on climate.

It's never piece of cake for governments to prioritize the future over the present, which has been the problem with climate alter. Information technology requires a political nonstarter: to prioritize future generations over the energy needs of the nowadays. The all-time risk nosotros have to break this political rule is your enormous sway. Other generations are leading the manner, proposing solutions and working together. They demand your generation to use your power to alter our politics and to help save u.s..

Boomers get what boomers desire

It'south no secret that over the past 60 years, your generation has go the politically ascendant strength in the W and the United States, in detail. Yous're a large accomplice. Yous vote.

Many of you also had a lot of adept luck out of the gate. You entered the strongest labor market on tape that provided livable wages fifty-fifty for those who did not attend higher (which was a fraction of the price as it is now). Y'all and then did well in the housing market, turning cheap houses into lucrative sources of equity.

Y'all also played politics well. The economic opportunities you experienced were conspicuously not extending to future generations but you didn't advocate for policies to assist. Over again and again, you racked up debt to your shorter-term benefit. You didn't use budget surpluses in the 1990s to invest in the future. Y'all borrowed heavily to keep the housing marketplace inflated during the sluggish 2000s. And when the bubble popped, we got the Great Recession. (This has become a source of intergenerational resentment that's led to the cutting phrase, "OK, boomer.")

Certainly, the boomer generation has made contributions to our gild. You paved the style for the rights of women and people of color in the workplace. Y'all built the technology industry that changed the world. And you haven't always gotten everything you've wanted politically.

Merely you've got a strong rails record of success in politics. There'due south an opportunity correct at present to show your sway. The upcoming presidential and congressional elections in 2020 volition exist crucial to the futurity of climate change.

President Donald Trump's environmental policies aren't just non helping, they are setting united states back. His administration has been even more aggressive in rolling back rules and increasing oil and gas product than even his Republican predecessors. His decision to pull the US out of the Paris agreement is pain international progress toward coming together its goals. To underscore his feelings on the effect, recall that he mocked Thunberg on Twitter.

Nosotros need you at present

The climate emergency is getting worse and information technology'south happening faster than scientists feared. State and oceans are getting hotter. Seas are rise faster. And we're seeing a trend in more ferocious storms and wildfires, and devastating droughts and floods.

Every bit the New York Times puts it:

Just how fast temperatures will continue to increase, and how much worse things may get, depends in large part on whether the world reins in greenhouse gas emissions, and by how much. After flattening between 2014 and 2016, annual emissions from burning fossil fuels for free energy have risen once more.

The problem isn't that we don't know what to practice. The solutions are clear: We demand to burn fewer fossil fuels, restore forests instead of destroying them, eat less meat, and consume less overall.

The problem isn't that nosotros don't have people who are calling for change. The problem is political will, which requires political power. Your generation has it.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/8/21055097/baby-boomers-climate-change-australia

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