The Coming Generation Chasm
On sunny days, the Millennials emerge. Born between 1980 and 1996 – the Reagan/Bush/Clinton glory days – they’re parents now. They push their babies ensconced in sport utility strollers and hold teetering toddlers by the hand. It’s a touching sidewalk scene, especially the tenderness of the dads.
I like them. The Millennials in my neighborhood seem committed to both nuclear family and local community, and they’re willing to chat with wandering old folks like me. But I can’t help thinking: someday your children will be deeply angry at you. They’ll resent you and struggle to forgive you.
They may even hate you.
How could that be? Your parenting is tolerant and data-driven. You’ve got the little tykes zooming about on balance bikes and playing with empathy-enhancing toys. You’re not just winging it, like your parents did (and their parents, and their parents). Okay, we’ll grant all that, you’re enlightened moms and dads – now please zip ahead 22 years. It’s 2040 and the recent, alarming United Nations climate change forecast has come true and then some, because these reports tend to be conservative.
On our present trajectory, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, by 2040 we’ll live in a world increasingly ravaged by wildfires, drought, colossal storms, severe heat events and food shortages. Coral reefs will experience a mass die-off, imperiling ocean systems. Surely, social and economic breakdown will accompany these dread outcomes. Climate refugees will swamp borders. Nations will splinter apart.
So, of course your kid is mad! Who wouldn’t be? You’re leaving her a degraded world, getting worse. Your generation could have taken collective action to prevent more warming, but you didn’t. More than ever, the American Dream seems a myth. The social compact between adults and children is frayed if not broken.
From your child’s perspective, that’s a betrayal worthy of undying scorn.
Hold on, you say. Youthful anger over the Sorry State of the World is perennial. Wouldn’t this be just another spasm of the fabled “generation gap,” like clashes over the Vietnam War in the 1960s or the digital canyon now yawning between kids and adults?
Alas, probably not, because there’s no resolution in sight. Atmospheric changes wrought by global warming don’t diminish for several hundred years, barring unprecedented reforestation or global rollout of carbon-sucking and sequestering devices. (Delusional tech-optimists can stop reading here. Everything’s fine!) For the purposes of our lives and legacies, the calamitous effects of climate change are irrevocable.
Irrevocable, as in baked in. As in irreversible. This brand of damage runs against our thinking grooves. Humanity so far has been pretty good at recovery and improvement, even as we keep screwing up. Wars end, we rebuild. Withheld rights are granted. Polluted air and water often get cleaned up, extreme poverty is lessened and evil folks die and are replaced with more promising models.
The bummer of climate change, however, is its relative finality. Even if we cease nearly all greenhouse gas emissions today, we’re stuck for centuries upon centuries with current levels of climate-related havoc. In 2040 we’re stuck – again, for dozens of generations – with the IPCC-predicted level of mayhem, even if we decarbonize society soon after. And so on for the catastrophic outcomes of 2060, if we keep fiddling and diddling.
Climate change is the stain that won’t come out. It’s the punch that keeps throwing itself, the rain that falls and falls. There’s no off button. No Planet B.
Millennials, just imagine this. You’re middle-aged in 2040. Your beloved offspring, hip deep in hot water, point their blaming fingers at mom and dad. At greedy grandpa and gramma, too, but mostly at you – that’s just the raw deal parents get. Inactions, after all, have consequences – and so do feelings. The grand tradition of arguing across the Thanksgiving turkey passes away because your children don’t show up for Thanksgiving anymore.
You abandoned them, they’ll abandon you. And take the grandkids with them, if they bothered to reproduce at all.
Sadly, the coming generation chasm may be too wide to bridge. The sin of negligence behind the 2040 status quo could prove irredeemable, beyond healing.
Unless you can buy your children off. As usual, the wealthy win.
***
I like them. The Millennials in my neighborhood seem committed to both nuclear family and local community, and they’re willing to chat with wandering old folks like me. But I can’t help thinking: someday your children will be deeply angry at you. They’ll resent you and struggle to forgive you.
They may even hate you.
How could that be? Your parenting is tolerant and data-driven. You’ve got the little tykes zooming about on balance bikes and playing with empathy-enhancing toys. You’re not just winging it, like your parents did (and their parents, and their parents). Okay, we’ll grant all that, you’re enlightened moms and dads – now please zip ahead 22 years. It’s 2040 and the recent, alarming United Nations climate change forecast has come true and then some, because these reports tend to be conservative.
On our present trajectory, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, by 2040 we’ll live in a world increasingly ravaged by wildfires, drought, colossal storms, severe heat events and food shortages. Coral reefs will experience a mass die-off, imperiling ocean systems. Surely, social and economic breakdown will accompany these dread outcomes. Climate refugees will swamp borders. Nations will splinter apart.
So, of course your kid is mad! Who wouldn’t be? You’re leaving her a degraded world, getting worse. Your generation could have taken collective action to prevent more warming, but you didn’t. More than ever, the American Dream seems a myth. The social compact between adults and children is frayed if not broken.
From your child’s perspective, that’s a betrayal worthy of undying scorn.
Hold on, you say. Youthful anger over the Sorry State of the World is perennial. Wouldn’t this be just another spasm of the fabled “generation gap,” like clashes over the Vietnam War in the 1960s or the digital canyon now yawning between kids and adults?
Alas, probably not, because there’s no resolution in sight. Atmospheric changes wrought by global warming don’t diminish for several hundred years, barring unprecedented reforestation or global rollout of carbon-sucking and sequestering devices. (Delusional tech-optimists can stop reading here. Everything’s fine!) For the purposes of our lives and legacies, the calamitous effects of climate change are irrevocable.
Irrevocable, as in baked in. As in irreversible. This brand of damage runs against our thinking grooves. Humanity so far has been pretty good at recovery and improvement, even as we keep screwing up. Wars end, we rebuild. Withheld rights are granted. Polluted air and water often get cleaned up, extreme poverty is lessened and evil folks die and are replaced with more promising models.
The bummer of climate change, however, is its relative finality. Even if we cease nearly all greenhouse gas emissions today, we’re stuck for centuries upon centuries with current levels of climate-related havoc. In 2040 we’re stuck – again, for dozens of generations – with the IPCC-predicted level of mayhem, even if we decarbonize society soon after. And so on for the catastrophic outcomes of 2060, if we keep fiddling and diddling.
Climate change is the stain that won’t come out. It’s the punch that keeps throwing itself, the rain that falls and falls. There’s no off button. No Planet B.
Millennials, just imagine this. You’re middle-aged in 2040. Your beloved offspring, hip deep in hot water, point their blaming fingers at mom and dad. At greedy grandpa and gramma, too, but mostly at you – that’s just the raw deal parents get. Inactions, after all, have consequences – and so do feelings. The grand tradition of arguing across the Thanksgiving turkey passes away because your children don’t show up for Thanksgiving anymore.
You abandoned them, they’ll abandon you. And take the grandkids with them, if they bothered to reproduce at all.
Sadly, the coming generation chasm may be too wide to bridge. The sin of negligence behind the 2040 status quo could prove irredeemable, beyond healing.
Unless you can buy your children off. As usual, the wealthy win.
***
Demographers put my freshman and sophomore students at Boston University in the cohort cheerily known as Generation Z, containing individuals born after 1996. But for any young person growing up in the 21st Century, I’m using the term Generation A.
A for the newly-dawned Anthropocene Epoch, in which mankind can massively alter Earth systems. A for Abandoned by their elders. A for Awake to that Abandonment. And A, most of all, for Anxious.
They’re anxious about everything, small and large, personal and global. Many reasons have been floated for this, including helicopter parenting, social media agonies, environmental toxins and high loads of student debt. Let’s toss in rising income inequality, hyper-partisan politics and anxiety about their anxiety. That’s a potent brew of causative agents, a multifarious meme.
Indeed, but I suspect that grave concern for the future, theirs and the planet’s, underlies the everyday anxiety so common among youth.
Last semester I tried some group therapy with my Gen As. Face it, I told them, you’re at a highly selective college. You’ve made it, so relax. Statistics indicate that you’ll earn lots of money and have stimulating careers. Isn’t that nice to know? So at least for a while, during our journey together, try telling your anxiety bye-bye. Enjoy yourself, have fun. Go on a learning quest! Your future looks great. Congratulations!
It didn’t seem to work. Some students reacted with annoyance. Relax? Easy for you to say! You don’t have two papers to write by Friday, plus dance practice and internship forms to fill out. Others were concerned for people who don’t enjoy their privilege and still others rejected the idea that they were privileged at all. A few seemed married to their anxiety. The university, they grimly insisted, needs to provide unlimited mental health services.
They’re not selfish. These young people want to improve the world. They lack confidence in government, but they believe that individual action makes a difference. Many lower their carbon footprints by going vegan and unplugging their phone chargers. They wear organic clothes, carry steel straws and refill water bottles instead of adding plastic to that Pacific Ocean garbage patch.
At the same time, their heating, electricity and transportation needs are largely met by burning fossil fuels. At the same time, the Paris Agreement appears to be a sham as world carbon dioxide emissions are projected to climb a whopping 2.7 percent in 2018. At the same time, Brazil has elected a strongman president apparently eager to put the Amazon to the torch. At the same time, the U.S. reduces domestic coal burning while hiking coal exports – as if it matters where CO2 is released. Such structural and political realities are impervious to small, eco-virtuous acts.
Nonetheless, my students are trying. I think they and all of Generation A deserve a lot better from us – Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers – everyone with some power. Sooner or later, the young people from crib to college will figure that out.
***
A for the newly-dawned Anthropocene Epoch, in which mankind can massively alter Earth systems. A for Abandoned by their elders. A for Awake to that Abandonment. And A, most of all, for Anxious.
They’re anxious about everything, small and large, personal and global. Many reasons have been floated for this, including helicopter parenting, social media agonies, environmental toxins and high loads of student debt. Let’s toss in rising income inequality, hyper-partisan politics and anxiety about their anxiety. That’s a potent brew of causative agents, a multifarious meme.
Indeed, but I suspect that grave concern for the future, theirs and the planet’s, underlies the everyday anxiety so common among youth.
Last semester I tried some group therapy with my Gen As. Face it, I told them, you’re at a highly selective college. You’ve made it, so relax. Statistics indicate that you’ll earn lots of money and have stimulating careers. Isn’t that nice to know? So at least for a while, during our journey together, try telling your anxiety bye-bye. Enjoy yourself, have fun. Go on a learning quest! Your future looks great. Congratulations!
It didn’t seem to work. Some students reacted with annoyance. Relax? Easy for you to say! You don’t have two papers to write by Friday, plus dance practice and internship forms to fill out. Others were concerned for people who don’t enjoy their privilege and still others rejected the idea that they were privileged at all. A few seemed married to their anxiety. The university, they grimly insisted, needs to provide unlimited mental health services.
They’re not selfish. These young people want to improve the world. They lack confidence in government, but they believe that individual action makes a difference. Many lower their carbon footprints by going vegan and unplugging their phone chargers. They wear organic clothes, carry steel straws and refill water bottles instead of adding plastic to that Pacific Ocean garbage patch.
At the same time, their heating, electricity and transportation needs are largely met by burning fossil fuels. At the same time, the Paris Agreement appears to be a sham as world carbon dioxide emissions are projected to climb a whopping 2.7 percent in 2018. At the same time, Brazil has elected a strongman president apparently eager to put the Amazon to the torch. At the same time, the U.S. reduces domestic coal burning while hiking coal exports – as if it matters where CO2 is released. Such structural and political realities are impervious to small, eco-virtuous acts.
Nonetheless, my students are trying. I think they and all of Generation A deserve a lot better from us – Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers – everyone with some power. Sooner or later, the young people from crib to college will figure that out.
***
Barring new delaying actions by the Trump Administration, the case Juliana vs. U.S. is on track to be heard in U.S. District Court in Oregon. Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana, now 22 years old, is joined by 20 other young people, ages 11-21, in a suit against the government for aiding and abetting global warming.
Plaintiffs seek a ruling that orders “Defendants to prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend.”
Juliana swings for the fences. The suit invokes violations of the Fifth Amendment and its protection against the deprivation of “life, liberty, or property without due process,” the Ninth Amendment and its safeguarding of rights not enumerated in the Constitution, and the Public Trust Doctrine embedded elsewhere in our founding document.
Central to the case is the assertion in the Preamble of the Constitution that our cherished rights belong not just to present generations but to posterity. But why, asks futurist Wendell Bell, should we care about future people? Because, he answers, taking the future into constant, serious consideration invests the present with greater meaning.
Mainstream media, mired in the quivering sensational moment, has ignored Juliana, except in a “kids do the darndest things” kind of way. That’s typical and lamentable. The suit is unique in confronting the issue of generational responsibility for an abuse that cannot be corrected within a meaningful timespan. Ms. Juliana and friends distinguish themselves by claiming “the implied right to a stable climate system and an atmosphere and oceans that are free from dangerous levels of anthropogenic CO2. Plaintiffs hold these inherent, inalienable, natural, and fundamental rights.”
Shouted from child to parent, Juliana’s core complaint – don’t leave us with a disaster beyond remedy! – is a harbinger of the coming generational chasm. That shout will reverberate not just in courtrooms but inside families. And how will Millennials soothe their anxious, very angry grown children? Hey, we used LED light bulbs! Remember your sandwiches stuffed with organic, humanely raised chicken? And we bought carbon offsets for that African safari…
***
Plaintiffs seek a ruling that orders “Defendants to prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend.”
Juliana swings for the fences. The suit invokes violations of the Fifth Amendment and its protection against the deprivation of “life, liberty, or property without due process,” the Ninth Amendment and its safeguarding of rights not enumerated in the Constitution, and the Public Trust Doctrine embedded elsewhere in our founding document.
Central to the case is the assertion in the Preamble of the Constitution that our cherished rights belong not just to present generations but to posterity. But why, asks futurist Wendell Bell, should we care about future people? Because, he answers, taking the future into constant, serious consideration invests the present with greater meaning.
Mainstream media, mired in the quivering sensational moment, has ignored Juliana, except in a “kids do the darndest things” kind of way. That’s typical and lamentable. The suit is unique in confronting the issue of generational responsibility for an abuse that cannot be corrected within a meaningful timespan. Ms. Juliana and friends distinguish themselves by claiming “the implied right to a stable climate system and an atmosphere and oceans that are free from dangerous levels of anthropogenic CO2. Plaintiffs hold these inherent, inalienable, natural, and fundamental rights.”
Shouted from child to parent, Juliana’s core complaint – don’t leave us with a disaster beyond remedy! – is a harbinger of the coming generational chasm. That shout will reverberate not just in courtrooms but inside families. And how will Millennials soothe their anxious, very angry grown children? Hey, we used LED light bulbs! Remember your sandwiches stuffed with organic, humanely raised chicken? And we bought carbon offsets for that African safari…
***
In Iceland, the glacier Mýrdalsjökull has an icecap 700 meters thick at its heart. My wife Elahna and I recently visited a tendril of that glacier called Sólheimajökull. This massive appendage is melting due to global warming, tossing off dirt-streaked, SUV-sized icebergs as it retreats uphill. Several years ago, the Icelanders carved out a parking lot at the edge of Sólheimajökull. From that same lot, in fall 2018, we had to hike almost a mile to touch the fleeing giant.
A couple of small groups, fitted with helmets, crampons and ice axes, set off to hike the surface of the glacier. They ascended the ragged, glacial wall on zig-zagging paths cut by tour company employees. My wife's camera captured a bare-handed man hacking away with a pickax on one such path, and truly it seemed a Sisyphean task. He could swing for a million years and barely make a dent. Yet 7.7 billion people driving to work, raising livestock and vacationing in Iceland can send a glacier up the gorge pretty damn quick.
We tourists were a motley lot – Brits, Americans and Asians mostly, a mix of Baby Boomers in fleece layers and Millennials obsessively curating their Instagram feeds. On the tour mini-van, one young mom Skyped with her four-year-old daughter in New Jersey. Patiently, lovingly, she answered the tot’s questions about the ice in Iceland and if it melted and where the water went and on and on. The mom emailed a photo of herself smiling next to lumbering Sólheimajökull, and why not? It’s an awesome and exotic place.
But it's also sad. Our posing – we all did it – reminded me of big-game hunters standing next to their kills.
A few days later, the American people gave the House of Representatives back to the Democrats. A good day for the climate if they can block the president’s fossil-fuel powered agenda. But the Senate became a bit redder, more populated with global warming denialists and fake-news flamethrowers, and the supposedly liberal state of Washington again rejected a carbon tax referendum.
Meanwhile, Sólheimajökull retreats and the tourists fly in to chase it.
***
A couple of small groups, fitted with helmets, crampons and ice axes, set off to hike the surface of the glacier. They ascended the ragged, glacial wall on zig-zagging paths cut by tour company employees. My wife's camera captured a bare-handed man hacking away with a pickax on one such path, and truly it seemed a Sisyphean task. He could swing for a million years and barely make a dent. Yet 7.7 billion people driving to work, raising livestock and vacationing in Iceland can send a glacier up the gorge pretty damn quick.
We tourists were a motley lot – Brits, Americans and Asians mostly, a mix of Baby Boomers in fleece layers and Millennials obsessively curating their Instagram feeds. On the tour mini-van, one young mom Skyped with her four-year-old daughter in New Jersey. Patiently, lovingly, she answered the tot’s questions about the ice in Iceland and if it melted and where the water went and on and on. The mom emailed a photo of herself smiling next to lumbering Sólheimajökull, and why not? It’s an awesome and exotic place.
But it's also sad. Our posing – we all did it – reminded me of big-game hunters standing next to their kills.
A few days later, the American people gave the House of Representatives back to the Democrats. A good day for the climate if they can block the president’s fossil-fuel powered agenda. But the Senate became a bit redder, more populated with global warming denialists and fake-news flamethrowers, and the supposedly liberal state of Washington again rejected a carbon tax referendum.
Meanwhile, Sólheimajökull retreats and the tourists fly in to chase it.
***
According to a 2018 PEW study, 81 percent of Millennials acknowledge solid evidence of global warming, and 65 percent understand that it’s caused by human activity. They get it, better than any generation. My Millennial daughter gets it, too, although she’s more concerned with gay rights and the Me Too movement. Those worthy issues dominate daily parlance, news coverage and social-media outrage stoking. Climate change pops up now and then when a hurricane or terrifying report makes landfall.
But, yes, Millennials are woke. And now to be harsh: climate wokeness is worthless if it doesn’t translate into political action and legislative boldness – a federal carbon tax, for instance – that rapidly reforms the economy to run on renewable energy. In fact, with issue ignorance off the table, the contrast between Millennial knowledge and behavior becomes a damning indictment, a portrait of hypocrisy and selfishness.
The Book of Hosea sums it up, so aptly for this gathering storm: “They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.”
But we’re not there yet. The next generation gap doesn’t have to become a chasm.
Millennials, please, stop waiting for older folks to tackle climate change – it’s not going to happen, to our great discredit. It’s up to you now. And whenever you need extra motivation, take a long look at your sleeping children, snug in their safe places. Watch them breathe, in and out. Watch them dream.
They will grow up before you know it.
###
But, yes, Millennials are woke. And now to be harsh: climate wokeness is worthless if it doesn’t translate into political action and legislative boldness – a federal carbon tax, for instance – that rapidly reforms the economy to run on renewable energy. In fact, with issue ignorance off the table, the contrast between Millennial knowledge and behavior becomes a damning indictment, a portrait of hypocrisy and selfishness.
The Book of Hosea sums it up, so aptly for this gathering storm: “They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.”
But we’re not there yet. The next generation gap doesn’t have to become a chasm.
Millennials, please, stop waiting for older folks to tackle climate change – it’s not going to happen, to our great discredit. It’s up to you now. And whenever you need extra motivation, take a long look at your sleeping children, snug in their safe places. Watch them breathe, in and out. Watch them dream.
They will grow up before you know it.
###