Our children are angry and frightened, and they are speaking out. Young people’s voices are rising; they are loud and demanding to be heard, and it’s working. Not only are they increasingly invited in, but they are being asked to sit at the table, to speak in the boardrooms of multinational corporations and in the halls of Congress, on the steps of the White House and in houses of worship around the world. This is something I haven’t witnessed in my decades of working on the climate crisis.
We know that this crisis can’t wait. It’s urgent, its real, and it’s happening in large part because of us and on our watch. The emperor is wearing no clothes - we see this, and our children are watching and seeing it too. Our children are demanding answers and cutting through the ‘noise’ that distracts us in ways that only children can - with truth and without guile.
Our children see our hypocrisy and our hesitations, and they are calling foul on our actions of ‘kicking the can down the road.’ Our shining ‘north star,’ the Paris Climate Agreement, is a promise at best, something to strive for but with no significant funding, enforcement mechanisms or implementation tools in place.
