We’ve Completely Screwed the World. Can Teens Help Save It?

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash

By Darren Katz, Founding Partner, Amplia Group

As part of the youngest cohort of Baby Boomers, I accept that we have completely screwed the world. I’m talking, of course, about what is euphemistically called climate change. That phrase is probably part of the problem. It sounds like what happens when you fly from Chicago to the Caribbean. For that you can probably thank Frank Luntz, the famous Republican message guru, who correctly asserted that “climate change” was a much more user-friendly sounding disaster than “global warming.”

But the truth is regardless of what euphemisms we use, we’ve known about the science of carbon emissions for decades and we’ve done almost nothing. The Paris Climate Accords were a decent effort, but an example of something that should have been done in the 1980s, not the 2010s. Even that modest agreement is too much for the Climate Denier in Chief and his enablers in the Republican caucus and the fossil fuel industry.

So as it stands the world’s foremost advocate for decisive and immediate action is literally a 16 year old Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg. Greta is leading a group of young activists who have zero tolerance for obfuscation and delay on this issue. Will it make a difference? It’s probably already be too late to stop some of effects of climate change, but the people who will be most affected by it are standing up and being counted. That’s more than the Baby Boomers can say.