So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish — A Message from an Old Man to Young People
(The Politics of the Final Hundred Years of Humanity (2030–2130) — Part Three)
[A] 4°C world is not the plausible worst-case, it is the expected outcome of the emissions pathway we are currently on. The worst-case version would be if the 4°C world occurred far sooner than expected. … one of the Royal Society articles, ‘When Could Global Warming Reach 4°C?’… contains this remarkable finding: If we stay near the high emissions pathway, and “If carbon-cycle feedbacks are stronger [than currently modeled], which appears less likely but still credible, then 4°C warming could be reached by the early 2060s in projections that are consistent with the IPCC’s ‘likely range.’”
Joseph Romm, ‘Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know’ 2015, pp. 137–8.
Yeah, I know … I know… we’ve had enough of old people … old men… talking to … well, at … young people … but I just wanted to say SORRY*...#
I’m sorry that I did so little to bring about the changes for which I argued so passionately. I’m sorry that I did almost nothing to prevent us following a path that leads to the end of humanity.*
I’m a political philosopher by training and that means I am always a critic of how thing are. And I believe in social progress. So, I do not see capitalism as an expression of the ‘good society’ and I believe that capitalism had served its purpose and something different was necessary to match the new technologies people had developed.
If anyone bothered to ask me, I would have told them that capitalism was killing them. But most didn’t ask. And capitalism wasn’t obviously killing people in Australia. If it was killing them, they were hidden away from the rest of society. Lots of them in remote areas and some of them in institutions that nobody much cared about.
I wasn’t going around telling people that capitalism was great and the secret to their happiness was having more stuff, though. I know I said the opposite, if anyone wanted my opinion on the matter.
Yet I didn’t do anything like enough. None of the people of my and preceding generations came anywhere near doing what needed to be done. There might have been a few people who sacrificed themselves to preserving the humanity of future generations.
But the chances are so vanishingly small that you can discount the possibility that you are ever talking to an old person who we might think of as having done everything s/he could to prevent the end of humanity.
So, you’re safe in thinking that none of the old people around you did everything we could to prevent a trajectory toward the final hundred years of humanity. We probably weren’t involved in the climate change denial industry. It’s a little more likely that we worked in the fossil fuel industry. A small percentage if us voted for, generally useless, green parties. Most of us didn’t. A lot of us voted for parties that were very clear that environmental issues were of little importance. Some because their leaders denied climate change and others in their party followed them like sheep.
Others of us voted for parties whose leaders talked environmental protection when it suited them and dropped that talk when it didn’t.
Most of us voted to cut taxes and reduce the government’s capacity to protect the environment. We voted for our jobs over preserving the environment for future generations. We voted to maintain our quality of life at the expense of your quality of life. Whenever the time came and we were faced with a choice, we chose to sacrifice your future.
I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not asking for myself. I’m not asking for anyone else who’s over 40 and I’m certainly not asking for it for anyone over 50. I don’t think you should be forgiving. I don’t think we should be forgiven.
I’m trying not to tell you what to do. But I just can’t see why expressing anger and resentment is wrong and forgiveness right. Under normal circumstances, I’d argue for forgiveness. I claim to be some sort of Buddhist. Lovingkindness and all that…
But not in this case. Forgiveness is just wrong. Anger and resentment are right.
They’re right because we over-50s have had it good and will continue to do so unless we’re forced to face the reality we have created. At worst, we lived under the shadow of nuclear destruction. If our leaders were stupid enough then things would get very ugly. There was nothing inevitable about it, though.
And we had near full employment. And we had jobs that lasted a lifetime.
When we were told that our lifestyles weren’t sustainable, we ignored that. Some of us chose to believe climate change denialists. Some of us chose to ignore climate scientists and keep wasting water and energy. We kept consuming and driving and having holidays and not giving a damn about the future of the planet… about your future…
And now some of us are telling you not to be angry and resentful. They want you to be ‘reasonable.’
After we sacrificed your future to our present, some of us want you to play nice and not confront us with our failure, provoke our guilt, foster our shame…
After we ignored the warnings and refused to compromise our lifestyles, some of us want you to let us live out our final years free of guilt and shame and self-loathing.
OK… I know I might have implied that I wouldn’t do it. But I’m going to tell you what I THINK you should do:
Every time you sit with your parents and grandparents ask them why they didn’t do enough.
Every time you meet someone over 45 (but sometimes an over 40) ask us why we didn’t do enough.
Every time you see a politician anywhere ask her or him why they are not doing anything meaningful to prevent catastrophic human-caused environment change.
And keep asking… not because you’re going to get a good answer… but because we need to know how badly we failed you and we need to own it.
* I explained how we got here and what happens next in the first two parts of The Politics of the Final Hundred Years of Humanity (2030–2130) published on this site
This piece reflects, but does not reproduce any of, my ‘The Politics of the Final Hundred Years of Humanity (2030–2130), which is due to be published by Springer Publishing in March, 2020.
*I’ve left that in caps, to confirm my old person status
#Bloody Trump has ruined ellipses for me!
