November 14, 2024

Letter to the Editor: So much for the optimism and activism that used to characterize the Baby Boomer generation

LETTER TO THE EDITOR — Your story about The Sustainability Project’s third annual Youth Climate Action Conference (YCAC), and about the keynote presentation by two Grade 8 students from Arran-Tara Elementary School, is a bright ray in a dismal sky. The recent US election has doomed the United States to at least four years of climate inaction (or rather, to assaults by its executive, legislative and judicial branches on any sane public policy related to the climate.) And in its next federal election, Canada will likely follow in the same direction.

I’m ashamed that my own generation — baby boomers — seems by-and-large, to supply a large chunk of the votes that are equivalent to votes to kill our grandchildren. The optimism and activism that characterized so many of us in the 60s have proven razor thin, more scum than skin on the body politic.

As a baby boomer I grew up believing that my generation would axiomatically bend the arc of history toward justice. I believed we were natural-born benevolent leaders. I was presumptuous and wrong. My generation is not monolithic in its voting patterns, but its drift toward denial is palpable. Maybe all older generations migrate towards self-absorption, but for my generation, the gap between our young aspirations and our old behaviour is exceptionally disappointing.

Perhaps the best thing my generation could do right now, would be to get the hell out of the way and let younger folk steer the ship. But of course, we won’t get out of the way until, through our deaths, we are a demographic no longer able to damn things.

So if we won’t get out of the way of climate action, young people should shove us out of the way. I would like the shoves to be gentle, but as each unremedied month passes, the chances of us being shoved gracefully will recede.

Young people — we old people will not save us from climate catastrophe. You, though, just might be able to do it.

But you already know that.

John Butler
Grey Highlands

 

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