Thankfully, we now have the opinion of Clara Nevins, a “high school activist, dancer, and writer” (strange, she doesn’t want to be a STEM major?), who isn’t impressed with all those old fogey Warmists when she took a long fossil fueled trip to the Paris Hotcoldwetdry conference
A Millennial’s Take on Climate Activism
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Paris was abuzz. At the Chamber of Commerce, 200 adults in business suits, wearied by two hours of oil companies’ execu-speak, slammed coffee at the 11 am break. There I was, a 5-foot-3 15 year old in a ponytail in a room full of blue suits and gray hair. I felt so out of place.
The next speakers were equally ancient-looking oil industry CEOs again throwing around terms like API, KBD, and NGL. I tried my best to follow but I could not comprehend all the acronyms, and I certainly couldn’t imagine seeing my friends in the audience trying to understand.
The next day I hoped I might feel more at home at the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network conference. My mom and I arrived at a tired conference hall filled to the brim with women my mom’s age. One woman was standing up, swaying to the bongos played by two indigenous women while another woman tried to get everyone’s attention.
“Ladies, before we start the day off, I want to welcome the oceans and the rivers into this room,” the woman at the podium began. At that moment, I felt like I was in the 70s Coke commercial, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” This way of rallying felt so antiquated. Again, I felt so out of place.
Rather ageist, wouldn’t you say? Even sneering. And she totally wasn’t inspired, and wants to find a way to get all the other Special Snowflakes involved. Heck, they might as well, because, thanks to the economic and other policies from the people and political parties they support, the jobs market stinks.
When older people with flowy hair or business suits speak about climate change, it doesn’t have an urgency that seems like ours when in fact, this issue is more ours than any single cause.
So, obviously, she has Big Ideas to solve this who issue of a minor 0.8C increase in global temperatures over 166 years, right? A plan to stop the prognosticated doom of a 1.2C rise by 2100?
I realized I shouldn’t dismiss or have disdain for the people who created the movement and have led us to this point, but now, we must take it from here, make it our own, and transition it with language and stakes that will have meaning for my millennial peers. So my fellow millennials, rise up, show up and make noise to send a message. Buy conscientiously and sustainably and forcefully encourage your parents and friends to do the same. This issue needs fresh and innovative ideas so use your vote, use your wallet and use your force because the power is in our hands.
She may not have gray hair and be her mom’s age or ancient-looking or antiquated. She’s not banging on bongos, acting like the hippies who started all this, but, her ideas are exactly the same. Spreading awareness and a token change in consumerism. Just with more energy!
Do any of the citizen scientists wonder why the coldest year in the past 105 years was… was 105 years ago? It’s now 1.3C warmer than in 1910. If it were natural variability, wouldn’t you expect some more lows over the past century?
It hasn’t cooled for 105 years.
Geologically speaking, would be like saying it’s been warm for a minute out of a hundred years.
The job market stinks because of reduced aggregate demand. As we transfer more and more wealth to the rich, our working classes have less to spend (and the rich spend a much, much lower proportion of their money than do the working classes). This has been accruing for at least the past 35 years due to government policies (both Repub and Dems) on taxes, patents/copyrights, immigration, trade and unions. The sluggish economy may well be the new normal as long as we keep redistributing wealth upward.
The all-time high temperature record for the world was set in 1913, while the all-time cold temperature record was set in 1983.
Nonsense. It hasn’t cooled for over 100 years.
Our liberal economist Jeffrey wrote:
And Jeffrey’s solution? Why it’s to dramatically increase the costs of energy, to generate new taxes to pay for government-directed projects to produce more ‘green’ energy — kind of like Solyndra! — which will lower aggregate demand even further, because our working classes will have even less to spend on other consumer goods, because they are paying so much more for energy. By his own economic analysis, Jeffrey would make the working classes poorer!
Which is, of course, what I have been saying all along.
Now, Jeffrey might well argue that, hey, the new renewable energy methods will create jobs themselves, and such probably would be the case . . . for a limited number of people.
And, while the new renewable energy methods might create some new jobs manufacturing them — much of it done in China, of course — the real money that will be made in the United States on this will be made by the people who are already well to do: the investors, the engineers, the scientists and the executives.
Thanks for making my point. UNLESS we change the way we do business by changing policies on
it will be same as it ever was. You make the unsubstantiated assumption that transitioning to renewable energy sources will necessarily and selectively harm the working classes. Only if we let it. By taking their jobs and their homes, the Great Recession devastated the working classes, doing more damage than transitioning to renewable energy sources will. Who spoke for the working classes then? We gave trillions to the big banks but ignored the working classes.
Our trade, tax and union policies redistribute wealth to the already rich, taking jobs and security from the American working classes.
Sorry for facts, J, but the US has one of the most progressive tax policies in the world.
“Hasn’t cooled for 105 years.” So? I take it that you have records for all the 105 year periods in our climate history of 4 billion years? Because there’s obviously no way it could have warmed in other 105 year periods like it allegedly is now.