“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Close to half of the global population, 41%, are under the age of 24. And they’re angry. From Hong Kong to Stockholm, from St. Petersburg to New York City, young people are rising up to fight inequality and draw attention to the climate emergency.
Their elders should be grateful, Simon Tisdall, veteran foreign affairs op-ed columnist and former US editor of The Guardian wrote in a Sunday Observer essay this past weekend, because the issues at stake affect us all.
It’s too soon — and possibly a mistake — to draw a straight line between today’s street demonstrations and the generation-defining May, 1968 student riots in Paris, but the parallels are clear. The Fridays 4 Future climate movement and the School Strike For Climate protests inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg — she turns 17 in January — have galvanized today’s young people to a scale rarely seen in our lifetimes.
At first glance, the street protests around the world seem to revolve around local and regional issues — riots over the rising price of vegetables in India, skyrocketing fuel costs in Chile, the burgeoning independence movement in Catalonia, sudden regime change in Sudan and the lingering pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, to cite just a few — but there’s a common thread.
More and more, young people, loosely defined as women and men between the ages of 18 and 24, are at the forefront of demonstrations that are increasingly violent and, in some case, have turned deadly.
Younger people are predisposed to upsetting the established order of things in any era, Tisdall says, often driven by economic, social and political imbalances, but the climate protests are different. “It is as if the unprecedented environmental traumas experienced by the natural world are . . . (reflected in) similarly exceptional stresses in human society.”
Consider the demographics. There are more young people today than ever before. The global population, at last estimate, tipped over 7.5 billion. Four-in-10 of those 7 billion — 41%, to be precise — are aged 24 or less. In Africa, the youth trend is even more marked: 41% are under the age of 15. In Asia and Latin America, home to 65% of the world’s total population, 25% are 15 or younger.
These young people, especially those at the younger end of the age scale, will reach adulthood in a world scarred by memories of the 2008 financial crash and worried about signs of a new, bigger financial crash to come, a world buffeted by
the increasingly capricious winds of climate change, the result of global overheating that is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientific projections of just 10 years ago.
Social media is linking and connecting young people in ways social scientists have yet to come to grips with. The industrial revolution had a profound effect on human development, but what is happening with digital technology is happening much faster. Lebanon’s protests have been dubbed the “WhatsApp revolution,” and with good reason.
The climate protests in particular are part of a new global movement to save the planet and correct the abuses of the recent past, everything from the spike in carbon emissions — caused mainly but not solely by our outdated over-reliance on coal and other dirt-spewing fossil fuels — to species extinction caused by the erosion and, in some cases, wanton destruction of natural habitat.
Coupled with young people’s natural distrust of politicians and policy makers of all political stripes and designs, it’s a toxic brew.
Small wonder, then, that many of the young climate protestors’ inspirations include David Attenborough, a 93-year-old naturalist and natural historian who has never lost his childlike wonder for the natural world. In just the past six months, Attenborough praised Thunberg’s actions and other youth protesters like her, from 14-year-old New Yorker Alexandria Villasenõr, co-founder of the US Youth Climate Strike and founder of Earth Uprising, to 21-year-old Muscovite Katerina Birdy, who cites care for the environment and climate activism as her primary passions, on her social-media home page (“We live in a time when it’s impossible to be silent. Speak up for the environment. We are living in a climate emergency.”)
“In the 20 years since I first started talking about the impact of climate change on our world, conditions have changed far faster than I ever imagined,” Attenborough said in the recent BBC documentary Climate Change: The Facts, in which he appeared with Thunberg. “It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world, and the collapse of our societies.
“There’s a message for all of us in the voices of these young people,” he added. “It is after all their generation who will inherit this dangerous legacy.”
What helps protect us, Tisdall says, “is the noisy, life-affirming dissent of the young.”
©Sebastien Claudon-Pixabay