Environmental collapse or sustainable future?
I wish this article about young people and their view of the future went into a lot more detail. Unfortunately it doesn’t, and is typical of what is getting published these days on major news sites.
There is pessimism among the younger generation, but also hope “for a sustainable future”. I have to wonder if they really know what those words mean.
In their quest to be environmentally friendly, climate-smart citizens, the young people look for the ‘right’ things to do. Not finding what they’re looking for in the world around them, they express negative feelings such as powerlessness and hopelessness instead of hope that might lead to an ability to act on environmental issues.
“The important lesson to learn from this study is that there are young people aged 17–18 walking around with a very real expectation that their future, and the future of their children and grandchildren, is a world that may be characterised by environmental collapse and climate chaos.”
Cool. At least they get it. I hope. Sometimes fear is a catalyst for action. Or at least personal preparedness. Like learning the essential life skills to stay alive in a declining world. But somehow, I sort of doubt this. The young people I run in to are surly, rude, careless and indifferent (so far). I’m not rubbing elbows with intelligent, capable, competent or even interested young people. Perhaps they’re out there, just not here. Or perhaps this article doesn’t convey the whole story.
If they’re truly aware of the predicament of the future – they already know that they really are powerless within the current paradigm to change much of anything. That would be start – to realize that seeking a system change within the system is already a failure.
The young people in the study also have difficulty seeing how adult society, the education system, politicians and the business sector can help them create a sustainable future.
Well, they can’t. Not really. The education system, politicians and business sector is going to choose the path of self-survival. As always. An entirely new paradigm has to be created – from the ground up, that encompasses real true sustainability (assuming that this could even happen, another topic altogether). But as always, the terminology is always being redefined and watered down to mean something that it was never meant to mean. And the goal posts get shifted around along with new verbiage. What we’re really talking about here is business as usual. The new is the old and the old just doesn’t intend to change.
I feel for the young people, but there’s just not much I can do. Learn life skills for a declining world would be my advice. Quickly. Abandon any and all notions of stability. Know that what you have today will be gone tomorrow. And so on. But I don’t think they read this blog, so I’ll stop here.
Unfortunately, 17-18 year olds haven’t been indoctrinated yet into the culture of material want, debt and greed our previous generations are up to their eyeballs in. Once saddled with student loan debt, a mortgage payment and threat of incarceration or starvation, most will choose to join the corporatocracy of the new world order and “consume”, “obey”, “eat”, “sleep” without any pushback except self loathing followed by medication, alcoholism and addiction.
‘Sustainable development’, is one of the biggest lies of age we live in. No development (other than the conversion of industrial zones into permaculture gardens or the like) is sustainable.
Until the money system is changed, nothing else can change. And those with a short-term vested interest in the current money system will not allow it to be changed. Hence, everything that matters get made worse.
Baseline shift -the phenomenon of each generation of young people accepting what they see around them as being normal, even as it becomes more aberrant- is a major contributor to allowing the destruction to continue. People of my age (66) KNOW everything is being made rapidly worse by the system because we have a basis for comparison that goes back to the 1950s.
I hate to say: ‘I knew this would happen this year’
Daily CO2
April 26, 2017: 412.63 ppm
April 26, 2016: 407.41 ppm
but I knew this would happen this year.
Funny how so few others -especially politicians and the media- know anything at all of significance.
They’re enamored with popularity, prestige and position. This is why they don’t give a fuck about the peons (except for lip-service and only when it is politically expedient).
I’ve got nothing good to say about these selected ‘officials’. They can officiate over my dead body.