… And the variants such as, “My generation is hopeless! It’ll have to be up to the younger generations to change things.”
Yeah … NO. We do not get to just adopt this attitude and sail off into our happy dotage! We have to push past this mentality! (“We” being older people in the privileged classes.)
So, if you’ve been feeling like this, here are some immediate easy first steps for you:
• Read this article recommended by a friend of mine who’s an environmental sciences professor and public official. I really trust her assessments of things. My friend commented, “I told [a friend] last month that June felt like the long anticipated ‘tipping point.’ I (obsessively) follow several national and international (data-based) agency websites to watch trends in atmospheric chemistry and temperature, oceanic temperature, sea and land ice extent, etc., and my mouth has been agape the past several weeks watching the records break out of the pack of multi-year steady increases. We’re all feeling the effects — heat domes in the south and catastrophic flooding in the north plus wildfires, but the data confirm that this year is truly unprecedented. This excellent article pulls all of those factors into one place to review. Very good article; very bad news.” Here’s the article she’s talking about: “The world just broke a stunning slew of heat records. Why right now?” (Bob Henson; Yale Climate Connections).
• Read this article “What baby boomers can do about climate change” (Bill McKibben; Yale Climate Connections.)
• Check out Third Act, an organization founded by McKibben to empower people over 60 to address climate and racial-justice issues.