Climate change may spark youth movement
Paul Ennals
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Paul Ennals is the independent chair at two local safeguarding children boards.
It is often claimed that today's children and young people do not have the same level of commitment to social issues as some previous generations.
I am not so sure. In fact, I think that the conditions may be converging for us to see a big upturn in youth engagement with perhaps the greatest issue of our time - climate change.
There are five conditions necessary for a major social movement - and four of them seem to be visible now.
First, the moral purpose must be clear. That's pretty easy - saving the planet from desolation, preserving many of the species that face extinction… you don't get much more moral than that.
Second, there must be opponents - powerful forces lined up against the cause. There are plenty of them in the big corporations, the oil industry. There are also local enemies to face up to - parents who forget to turn lights off, the neighbour's gas-guzzling car, people who drop litter, and supermarkets that wrap food in plastic.
Third, the threat must feel real. This is where we see the biggest change. The long hot summer has moved the narrative about climate - although, theoretically, we know that any one year's weather cannot easily be attributed to climate change, in practice everyone is now talking about the connection.
Even those tabloid newspapers that were convinced that climate change was a Chinese plot have shifted position. Climate change feels real, and it makes it hard to sleep at night.
Fourth, there must be tangible action that young people can carry out that makes a difference. Refusing to buy plastic bags, cleaning the beach of litter - these and many other actions can bring visible change in a short time. There is nothing that encourages participation in a campaign more than measurable limited success towards a long-term goal.
The fifth condition is the one I am less sure about. A campaign needs organisation - a focal point, a leader, a structure to harness all the many local efforts into something much bigger. I can't see that yet.
None of the major political parties (with the exception of the Greens) have seen the potential of climate change activism as a means of securing the support of tomorrow's generation of voters.
Some of the animal charities have toyed with a youth-oriented campaign - the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in particular - but not yet at the scale needed to empower a generation.
Tackling climate change could be the defining issue for today's generation of young people. It could introduce them to social action and politics.
It could provide an antidote to the creeping selfishness that they see displayed in so much of the culture around them. It could enable the rising generation to right some of the wrongs that the current generation of leaders committed.