They could all give up their use of fossil fueled travel (especially for selfies at places they don’t care about, just wanting the picture), stop using so much electricity for streaming videos, and so much more, making their lives carbon neutral, right?
Millennials and Gen Z want to stop a climate catastrophe. But first they have to get elected.
When a group of young climate activists confronted Dianne Feinstein at her San Francisco office in 2019, the six-term Democratic senator cited her deep experience in Washington in refusing their demand that she endorse the Green New Deal.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing,” Feinstein, then 85, told the students. “You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected, I just ran, I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality, and I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit.”
Feinstein added that the Green New Deal, a package of aggressive environmental reforms championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, would die at the hands of Senate Republicans.
“You can take that back to whoever sent you here,” the senator told Isha Clarke, a 16-year-old student from Oakland.
One student protested that Feinstein should instead listen to her constituents.
“You didn’t vote for me,” Feinstein chided.
On one hand, that really shows what federally elected officials think. That they’re better than the average person, that they do not need to listen to the citizens of their states, that they are not beholden to them. Especially Democrats. On the other hand, these children invaded her office, refused to leave, and Demanded not only an audience, but, that Feinstein do what they say. They’re children, they really have no life experience, and it’s a pretty poor way to get someone to listen. Feinstein should have asked them what they’re doing in their own lives.
Clarke, now a sophomore at Howard University and cofounder of Youth vs. Apocalypse, told Insider the protest got a “huge reaction” from the public.
“We are literally facing the end of humanity and politicians are like, ‘Sorry, no can do’ in the face of people who it’s going to impact,” Clarke said.
The nonbinding Green New Deal resolution, meanwhile, went nowhere — just as Feinstein predicted.
The episode illustrates the tension between the nation’s youngest Americans, who are demanding political action on a huge scale to fight the planet’s climate crisis, and aging government leaders who don’t share their sense of urgency.
So, basically, instead of making their own lives carbon neutral, they need to get elected to force their Beliefs on Everyone Else. And then there’s Youth vs. Apocalypse (non-paywalled at Yahoo)
The spread of ‘climate doom’ on TikTok is hurting the climate justice movement – and Gen Z
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The climate crisis has become quite the hot topic on social media apps like Twitter and Instagram. On TikTok, the hashtag #ClimateChange has about 3 billion views, with countless videos under it. Many posts revolving around the climate crisis depict a teen dramatically posing while a sad song plays in the background. “None of our efforts are helping the climate crisis, the world is ending, there’s no point in even trying anymore” is plastered across the screen in bold text. We’re all viewing this content – and internalizing it, whether we like it or not.
“Climate doomism” is the idea that global warming is so advanced that any effort to combat it is meaningless. According to environmentalist Isais Hernandez, it “is often used as a scare tactic to disempower collectivized communities on their journey for environmental liberation.” (snip)
While some say videos that spread fear can be a call to action, they also often cause people to lose motivation with the climate crisis. Ultimately, people might give up their efforts because they think they will not have a lasting impact. To be clear, the grave effects of climate change need to be emphasized. But when videos that do nothing but spread fear gain thousands of likes, harm is done.
The adults have turned these kids into emotional messes, freaking about something that’s not going to happen. And making it worse by freaking themselves out. All while refusing to do much of anything in their own lives.
