Greta's World

I've been thinking a lot about Greta Thunberg.  She will be 17 in a couple of weeks and is an amazing young activist.  Hats off to her parents for building this gem of a child with such a good heart and wise soul.

Greta is two years younger than my youngest child, and nearly young enough to be the daughter of my firstborn.  She was born into a world we have taken for granted.  When we felt our families had to be a two income thing, we embraced things that made that easier.  We doubled our use of fossil fuels, nearly every item of food or product is/was packaged in trash, and we were too tired and stressed to care if it was a growing problem.  Those aren't excuses, they are explanations.  We handed her a world of selfish short-sightedness that my generation is only now beginning to see the problem of.

I was young in a town where milk was still delivered in glass bottles.  Very quickly it became cartons, and in many sizes.  We drank it from plastic straws or Styrofoam cups.  A quick dinner was baked in it's aluminum base and wrap before being devoured and thrown away.  Desert meant jumping in the (leaded fuel) car and driving a couple blocks to Dairy Queen.  There we consumed ice cream made from cows (emissions), shipped to individual stores (diesel, electricity) with plastic spoons in lined paper dishes.

I lived in "Chemical Valley".  It's that part of the US that is now famous for the "Dark Waters" of DuPont and Union Carbide and other chemical manufacturers.  I lived there for 19 years, then again for a few more before moving on.  My sister has an eye condition we know is from the soil there, and I had a battle with Lymphoma that we don't know the source of.  My daughter's great grandpa died of complications from being exposed to asbestos at work for many years.

In one generation, my fellow residents of the Mid-Ohio (river) Valley went from being hard working farmers and miners to being whining, entitled union workers with no need to worry about the environment.  It's not their fault entirely.  We were encouraged to "do better" or "get more" or leave something for our children. We embraced technology, communication, transportation, and science like no generation before us. Driven by what we were taught was "success", we took our new tools and found new and better ways to rape the planet.

About the turn of the century, we realized we were headed down the wrong path.  We began learning, sometimes involuntarily, what was happening and the long term effects.  We started making small differences; composting more, recycling some, and driving more fuel efficient vehicles.  We taught our children, now the young adults leading the world, that we need to be smarted and more connected to nature. Still, we modeled that entitled mindset and throw away culture.  Most of us still do.

Sadly, we taught our children to work even harder and earn even more.  Most can't survive without take out, and not because they are lazy.  It is a necessary evil in may households because of the hectic lifestyle.  We taught our kids to get psychotherapy, explore spirituality, get into good physical shape, and embrace the arts.  Now, as they become parents themselves, if they are lucky enough to be partnered, they are parents who both have to work.  On top of that are hours in a gym, active participation in support of a school, carpools to dance or music classes, and hours of coaching or watching our kids' sports. We are now two generations of exhausted adults.

That is what the people of Greta's generation have been handed.  It's a world so expensive that we  have to work even harder, even though we have such great technological advances. It's a world where just about everyone has some sort of addiction, whether drugs, sex, or Sandal's Vacations.  It's a world destroyed by taking things out of it and putting in things it can't benefit from.  We handed it to them with no sense of guilt-why should we feel guilty about doing what made our parents proud?

What is "Greta's Generation" doing with what we gave them?  They are, on a very personal and fundamental level, trying to fix the damage we have done.   In making those changes, they are teaching us how to value things beyond what money can buy.  These "kids" have a wisdom and foresight beyond any previous generations.  Millions of people just like Greta are working hard to make positive change.  While she is the face of it, the reality is that our kids are a damn sight better than we are.  Every single child in civilized society knows about recycling.  Most understand composting.  While they may not be perfectly doing it, this generation is making the world exponentially better than the one they were born into.

The very least we can do is give them the tools, the space and the platform to do that.  Greta has been harassed and criticized for her efforts and that needs to stop.  Kids have anxiety about their physical future and we need to recognize that. My generation simply MUST stop complaining and start embracing the idea of climate responsibility and consumer behavior change.

Just do it.  Learn to recycle.  Don't take more food than you can use.  Quit littering.  Mostly, stop complaining.  If you don't want to spend 5 cents on a bag, don't buy one.  When your bamboo based paper plate is not as strong as Styrofoam, quit complaining. When the waiter brings you a paper straw, suck it up.