• Question: Why has the older generation left us in charge of dealing with Climate Change??

    Asked by anon-213136 to Robert, Imad, Hannah, Fern, Christian, carolwallace on 10 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 10 Jun 2019:

      Good question and I think a lot of people should feel VERY ashamed for the damage they are causing. Honestly, I think it is down to convenience and financial greed. Plastics are very cheap, easy to make and have lots of advantages, BUT one massive disadvantage – they do not break down very quickly and are costly to recycle. Governments need to really crack down on companies and force change, but these companies pay billions of pounds in taxes, which the government needs to pay for hospitals, police, housing, schools, etc. It’s a really sad situation.

    • Photo: Fern Johnson

      Fern Johnson answered on 10 Jun 2019:

      I think that they didn’t understand the seriousness of the problem – people have known about concepts like recycling for a long time, and some attempts to reverse man made problems, like the hole in the ozone layer, have been successful. There’s only so much that individuals can do to help climate change, a lot of the work has to be done by governments and companies: you can’t help what kind of power plant generates the electricity in your house. It doesn’t help that a lot of older people don’t take climate change seriously or think that scientists are lying (like Donald Trump). Not all older people are like that, but dealing with climate change is something that will go on for years, and can’t be stopped quickly, so future generations have to keep dealing with it.

    • Photo: Christian Gude

      Christian Gude answered on 10 Jun 2019:

      Ultimately I believe it’s a mixture of ignorance and the human nature to have trouble of letting go of privileges that they have got once. No-one wants to cut back for the planet and give up things they learned to love, such as traveling.

      But regardless of *how* we were left in this situation, feeling angry about it won’t help us at all to solve to problem. If anything, we need the older generation to work on this together with us, because they hold a significant amount of political power.

      Focus on doing your own thing to make things better and raise awareness in the older generation that not all is lost yet and they can still help to deal with climate change.

    • Photo: Carol Wallace

      Carol Wallace answered on 11 Jun 2019:

      I’m a wee bitty older than the rest of the panel and I remember recycling lots of things, everything came in glass bottles and you got money back for returning them (a real pocket-money bonus!)
      And then disposables were promoted – as being more hygienic and convenient, but it also meant that you could employ fewer staff (no washing up, less tidying) and thus get a bigger profit.
      I think it was all money driven.
      I’m delighted that we’re now doing more – BUT there’s much more to be done.
      We all need to be very, very careful and think about how we consume.

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