These are the same people purchasing lots of disposable items and clothes to take fossil fueled trips for a few selfies and TikTok videos, streaming tons of content, and getting food and coffee delivered in fossil fueled vehicles
Young people feel betrayed by government inaction on climate change — we must take action
With the impacts of climate change accelerating, it’s worth remembering that young people have the most to lose. Seventy five percent of young people in the U.S. have indicated a moderate to extreme worry about climate change, while reporting feelings of betrayal and distrust with our government’s long delayed climate action. With Congress divided for the next two years, the best opportunity to remedy this now lies with the Biden administration.
The good news is that we have a powerful tool to combat climate change — the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As former leaders of federal agencies, we know that the success of meeting the IRA emissions reductions potential rests in effective implementation. Luckily, the most just implementation strategy is also effective.
We can seek to repair young people’s justified distrust and reduce eco-anxiety with implementation of the IRA by advancing solutions that touch the lived experience of today’s young people. In a 2019 Washington Post poll, only 14 percent of teens indicated they had the opportunity to learn a lot about climate solutions in school. Now, with the IRA we can deploy clean energy solutions across America’s public schools enabling students to engage with climate solutions firsthand.
I suggest we ban them from uploading and watching all those carbon pollution intensive videos. No more food delivery. Install smart thermostats in their domiciles, keep the heat at 62, the AC at 82.
With nearly 100,000 schools across the country, public schools are among the largest consumers of energy in the public sector, and they operate the largest mass transit fleet in the country with 480,000 primarily diesel school buses. Currently only 9% of schools utilize solar, and less than 1 percent of America’s school bus fleet is electric. Yet, the demand for clean energy in schools is increasing. The Environmental Protection Agency recently doubled its first round of funding for the Clean School Bus program due to avid demand, with applicants in every state. Advancing climate solutions in schools has the potential to improve student health and learning while reducing annual costs for energy, maintenance, and operations.
Why can’t they walk or ride a bike instead, just cut the carbon footprint to almost zero.
Leaders of federal agencies can help our school systems understand their opportunities. For example, the IRS can provide guidance about how schools can take advantage of the clean energy tax incentives. Schools, like many other non-taxable organizations, will be able to access funding through the direct pay provisions. This can lower the upfront cost to install clean technology like geothermal heat pumps. Schools can still spend American Rescue Plan funding to replace HVAC systems—they need to understand how the credits in the IRA can make clean technology the most cost-effective option. For electric school buses, the clean commercial vehicle credits could help schools save up to $40,000 per bus.
Um, what? Public schools getting tax credits on the backs of the taxpayers? Plus, all those other measures come from the pockets of taxpayers.
The IRA gives young people a direct and effective conduit for activism and change. Students in cities like Salt Lake and Denver have pushed their school boards to pass resolutions to transition school districts to 100 percent clean energy. The funding opportunities the act provides can help students make their case for action even stronger.
Why don’t they start by making their own lives carbon neutral? Or is it just for Other People?
This shows the disconnect that so very many of the warmunists have: they really, really want zero-emission, low-cost energy, but have no flaming idea how to get from here to there, what would be involved, and what inconveniences and costs they would bear.
If I remember the numbers correctly, our church spent $20,000 on a solar system, roughly twenty years ago, or well before I moved back to the Bluegrass State. So far, the system has saved the church roughly $15,000 in sparktricity costs, according to the detailed electric bill. At that rate, the church should just about break even in five years. I haven’t heard of any maintenance having been required, but I can’t imagine any mechanical system which needs no maintenance at all.
To add electric school buses would cost money. To add solar systems would cost money. Yet our public schools are not exactly rolling in dough, so that money would have to come at the reduction of funds to be spent in other areas. What are they going to cut?
When I went to school, there were no ‘teachers’ aides,’ there were no metal detectors, there were a whole lot of things everyone expects in a modern school, yet somehow, some way, we managed to graduate students who could read their own diplomas. From third through sixth grade, I walked, well over a mile, to school, though I quickly learned to shorten the walk a bit by taking the railroad tracks. A small-town city school system, there were no buses.
If we pour tons of money into solar systems, the schools would have to cut back on some of the stuff they have today.
So surprising. Youth, with zero life experience, depend entirely on their public school teachers, universally democrats, for their world views and decide that the Democratic party talking point is important to them. Who could have seen that coming?