Climate action kids are the adults in the room
IT’S official, green is the new black. After a weekend of surprises in count centres across the country, one obvious headline stands out as the dust begins to settle on the Local and European elections. The surge in support for the Green Party has been the most pleasant of shocks to come out our ballot boxes. The electorate has sent a clear message to our Government that climate action needs to be taken seriously.
It is now a case of ‘over to you, Leo’ with early indications hinting that the Government will take steps to address the growing concern among the electorate for the state of our environment.
A carbon tax is almost certain to be among the measures the Government will introduce. While Fine Gael will be at pains to point out that this carbon tax is only one of a suite of measures in their climate action plan, the party nonetheless will have a job on their hands selling it to the electorate.
It is here that the Government must thread carefully as they run the risk of letting the carbon tax issue become the new water charge debacle.
The one group of the electorate that will take the least convincing that wholesale changes need to be implemented is the often maligned 18-24 age bracket.
It surely wasn’t a coincidence that on the day of the vote last Friday, thousands of secondary school students took to the streets of Ireland demanding the Government to take action over the climate crisis.
The students marched in solidarity with a global day of action led by the Swedish teenager turned global climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Students are an easy target for us grumpy
adults. Too often we see students as being idealistic and naive when it comes to such serious matters – we shrug our shoulders when they take to the streets and suggest that all this protest nonsense will be forgotten about once they get a job.
Back in March when students first came together across the globe to protest over a lack of action on climate change, the reaction in the UK to the youthful movement from some politicians in the Houses of Parliament was extraordinarily derogatory. The fact that Westminster was in the middle of yet another Brexit crisis at the time really shouldn’t be an excuse for what some public representatives had to say about the UK’s protesting teenagers.
The timing of last Friday’s marches across Ireland wasn’t ideal given that the country’s attention was firmly on the elections, but going forward we shouldn’t ignore their message. It is their generation that will be impacted the most by what measures we take to tackle climate change now.
A child born in Ireland in 2019 will experience a world vastly different to what we have today. So let’s do them a favour and listen to what they have to say, before it is too late.