Generational Differences

Climate change. To most Boomers and Gen Xers, it seems these words aren’t much more than a myth, a kind of media boogeyman that to them represents the ever so present threat of degenerates and yuppies trying to adulterate and ruin the precious American Dream they fought so hard to preserve. It seems, however, that the younger people get, the more climate change morphs from a fallacy of scientists trying to meddle with something they shouldn’t, to an existential threat that literally threatens every aspect of the every institution that cradles modern civilization in its hands. Still a boogeyman, but one of our own making. A terrifying one that has tangible power, seemingly capable of destroying civilization itself. That is, I hope, where my generation stands. The reason why it captures so much fear in me, and hopefully my generation, is because we are actually seeing it’s effects. All of the 10 hottest years on record occuring in the last 20? The city of Cape Town, South Africa being on track to running out of water? These facts are scary enough, and with the prospect that it’s only going to get worse it’s easy to see why our youngest people are the most scared of these 2 words. Not the oldest generation, though. Why? So

many natural disasters caused such great strife in their time. I recently read The Grapes of Wrath, and while the book took place a few years before the time of the boomers, the results of this disaster would still have been fresh in their minds. The images the book depicts, fields so dry that they just blow away, lines of starved farmers clogging the highways, the human tragedy of their struggles in a new place, these will be repeated with greater intensity and repercussions due to climate change. Why won’t they realize that climate change will cause more of these disasters that they lived through? Why can’t they see that this is the world that my generation will inherit from them?