Greta Makes My Generation Squirm
And rightly so…
My generation has been hearing about climate change since we were first aware of public discourse. I remember, in my teens in the 1970s, hearing about “eco warriors” and environmentalists. I recall the scoffing of my parents’ generation at warnings of the impending global threat of warming seas and melting glaciers, of crucial ecosystems under duress and failing, of the growing number of species at risk of extinction through human impacts.
I am 56 years old. I was was 16 in 1979. This was the era of Apartheid and gas shortages… of the rise of eco-warriors… of the mainstreaming of climate science – and of the beginning of the orchestrated denial of that science.
Climate change been established science in our awareness since the 1970s. Environmentalism has been mainstream all of our lives. The science has been common knowledge at least since the presidential bid of Al Gore. But, it was too convenient to keep using single-use plastics. It was too easy to cling to the established infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry. It was too much to ask to, not go vegan, but to at least eat LESS meat. It cut too much into personal investments to divest of stocks in high-pollution causing mega-corporations. There was too much wealth to be had in production of environmental poisoning new technologies like fracking. It was too inconvenient to limit our own carbon footprints. It was too great a risk to all those “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
It was far too comfortable to swallow the propagandized denial of climate science. The salve to our collective conscience was soothing. To accept the lie that we mere humans could not possible be at fault. We heard statements like, “humans cannot destroy what God created;” and, “God gave man all of earth’s resources to be used for our benefit.” Pundits and politicians and the man on the street shoveling snow mocked the idea of “global warming” because it was so cold in winter. These are actual statements I heard from the older generation and even from the pulpit. The propagandists — unsurprisingly, led by the Kochs yet again — built an entire political agenda upon the confusion around the term “global warming.” And, we let them run with it by doggedly choosing to ignore the nuances of what the term actually means.
So… yes, our generation earned the scorn of Greta Thunberg and her entire generation. Our generation deserves this world-wide castigation from our children and grandchildren. We are the generation to which hers has rightfully turned and demanded, what did we do to defend their future? What did we do to protect their hope for their own children’s futures?
I’m a proud progressive Christian. To me, that means we Christians have failed in our faith-ordained stewardship of God’s creation. People who proclaim themselves to be Christians, yet denying the clear science of climate change, watched for all these decades as the our human ecologies — yes “human ecologies” without which humanity cannot survive — barreled ever closer to climate catastrophe. Worse — these people steam rolled over every effort to do anything about it. And we, the majority of fellow Christians (and the majority of everyone else), did little to nothing to counter their false narrative and deleterious policies and actions. Greta Thunberg makes our generation squirm, and rightly so. Yes… We have failed spectacularly!
The question now is: WHAT WILL WE DO TO CORRECT OUR COLOSSAL FUCK UP?
