If young people forget and fail us, my generation won't forgive them!

In September 2019, teenage activist Greta Thunberg opened the United Nations summit on climate action with an excoriating “how dare you!” jeremiad aimed at her older co-citizens of the world. Now septuagenarian passivist Marcel Boyer replies in kind on behalf of his generation (especially of economists).

This is unbelievable. I shouldn't be writing this. I should be retired in a bright calmative environment. And this, after expending sweat and tears contributing to a new age of civilization for future generations, i.e., you.

Yet you keep protesting in the streets like sheep. You pretend to be ignorant and unable to realize your dreams because of me. Empty and cheap words! How dare you!

You say you hunger for action. But limitless potential is already available. The ways and means are at hand for a better world. Yet you fail to put them to work. All you can do is blame others, i.e., me. How dare you!

You are wasting my heritage. For more than 40 years the science of economics has been crystal clear. The keys to growth and prosperity for all have been found. How dare you continue to protest, looking away, pretending that I did not do enough, when the economics and solutions are there at your disposal in plain daylight?

You say there is nothing you can see and nothing you can do. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don't want to believe that. Because if you fully understood what you could be doing and still kept on failing to act, then you would be unworthy of the legacy your predecessors invested in you. And I refuse to believe that.

Economics is clear: Properly pricing the environment, through significant levies on carbon emissions, affecting all goods and services with no exceptions, is the only effective and efficient way to go. Effective in meeting the objective of a carbon-free world and efficient in minimizing its cost. Independently redistributing fiscal revenues to the lower quintile of income-earners you so revere is the incentive-compatible way to allow them to support and benefit from this win-win reform while contributing to a cleaner world.

The objective of cutting our emissions in half or even more can be attained only if you decide to roll up your sleeves. And light up your brains. And support those leaders, policies and incentives that will force you and your neighbours to engineer sustainable growth paths. This can be done only if you resolutely demand that you do it, not cheaply demand that others do it for you.

You should ask yourself why our precious environment is not properly protected, why it is not already restored, and why the needed policies are not adequately financed? You should counter the Juncker curse — “We all know what to do but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it,” as Luxembourg's former president Jean-Claude Juncker coined it. Political leaders fear that the pursuit of needed policies, which are necessarily demanding on you and your fellows, will generate a backlash and prevent them from being re-elected. Let you defeat that curse. By urging your friends to be or to support those political leaders showing courage and leadership in setting significant across-the-board levies on carbon emissions. Levies that are demanding on everyone and everything that generates carbon emissions.

The future is bright and full of possibilities. A carbon-neutral world is within reach if you show courage and leadership to make it happen. How dare you pretend that your future is a dead-end bleakish road! You must show the maturity to shape it and then tell it like it can be, hence like it is.

Do not fail my generation. Do not fail my legacy, in you. Do not have blame as your middle name. All future yet unborn generations are looking at you. If you choose to fail us all, you will not be forgiven. You will not get away with this. Right here, right now is where you must draw the line.

Let your hands shape the future.

FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS THE SCIENCE OF ECONOMICS

HAS BEEN CRYSTAL CLEAR.