I was in high school in the 90s when things were... pretty good. I can remember sitting in the kitchen with my mom and complaining that my generation really didn't have anything to rally around. Circumstances, I argued, made a generation great [or not] and they just weren't in our favor.
Be careful what you wish for.
In a recent graduation speech to a college prep school in Tennessee, writer Charles Alexander said:
But I'm afraid that this is a scary time, scarier than most people realize. We no longer worry so much about a sudden nuclear catastrophe, but we face a long-term, slow-motion disaster that could eventually be just as devastating. If you've paid any attention to science news in recent years, you can guess that I'm referring to climate change, also known as global warming. If we don't do something about it, climate change will slowly but inexorably transform the landscape and affect the lives of billions of people. Believe me, it's far more threatening to us than terrorism.
Any chance we can choose different circumstances? These sound just a little intimidating.
This is a great challenge that lies ahead of you. But with every great challenge comes a great opportunity. You will be called upon to transform our economy. Like my parents' generation, you will be drafted to save the world. You could be the next greatest generation.
That's pretty exciting, when you think about it.
It actually is exciting. Not just because that means that someday there might be an indulgent book written about us, but also because, lately, I have started to suspect we might be up to the challenge.
Why? Because over the last few years, we have been adapting. Many of us were raised in an era of abundance that we have not experienced as adults and, though it is certainly easy to brush it off as, "Welcome to the real world," the truth is that the real world as everyone, young and old, knew it in the 90s has been ripped out from under our feet. And yet here we all are--standing strong. We have adapted and we continue to adapt every day, bit by bit.
The thing is, it's not only our generation that is adapting. Everyone is adapting and I am sure that if I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with someone who had been around for a century or so, she would tell me that she's seen it all before--the amazing power of people to adapt and change their ways, thereby changing their circumstances.
Lucky thing, because I think this particular problem is best solved by those of us who are winding down just as much as by those of us who are ramping up. If we get through this, history will likely credit my generation, or perhaps even the generation below mine, because history likes to compartmentalize eras and events, but the truth will be that people across generational lines carried the load.
This is certainly true in my industry. The people I have had the opportunity to discuss sustainable events with (many of whom are the people making waves in their organizations) span across all generations. The "next generation event" I talk about here at my blog is a collaborative effort.
So what is Gen-Y's role in solving the climate change problem?
Alexander gave two pieces of advice the the generation he thinks can get us out of this mess:
1. Think for yourself:
Be skeptical of standard thinking and easy answers. Don't blindly follow a particular ideology. Don't march under one party's banner. Don't be a partisan. One thing I know for sure is that the solutions to climate change will not be Democrat solutions or Republican solutions. They will be bipartisan solutions achieved with the combined brainpower of leaders on all sides of political debates.
This is one charge we can answer. We learned how to do this from our boomer parents, who encouraged us to do/say/believe whatever we desired, and from the Gen-X movies, TV shows, and music we came of age with that bucked convention. To some extent, I think we saw this during the election season. In most of my conversations with 20-somethings, people supported a candidate (in the end you have to) but could identify things in each candidate that they liked. While Obama inspired hope in many in my generation, I sometimes wonder if part of his appeal to the young voter is that he was enough of a blank slate that we could attach the diverse things we really wanted in a candidate to him.
2. Be honest:
In the future, we will desperately need leaders who will tell us the truth about the environmental crisis. We will need political leaders who will tell us the truth about what we need to do to transform our economy. We will need business leaders who are honest about their companies' operations and who value sustainable development and long-term profits instead of short-term gains.
I don't think Gen-Y can help but be honest anymore. The Internet and social media have stripped out false pretenses. Transparency is natural to us and we are quick to distrust those who try to cloud it. A Gen-Xer I know thinks our tendency to put everything out in the open opens the door to the end of the expectation of privacy. This doesn't worry me so much. I am still completely able to discern between information I voluntarily put out into the world and information that is taken from me. I tend to agree with Tim Sanders: transparency helps the nice. In the environmental arena, it helps those who are actually making contributions. This goes for individuals, corporations and politicians.
If we can think for ourselves and be honest, perhaps Alexander's suggestions can be our contributions to the climate change issue and maybe, when added to the efforts of all generations, they will be just enough to make this work.
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