KERRE McIVOR

KERRE HAS AN IDEA FOR CHEERING UP THE YOUNG ONES CONCERNED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

Last week on talkback, I was asking people whether they’d ever been so moved by a cause, so impassioned by conviction, that they had taken to the streets and marched.

In the days before social media, people tended to walk their talk when they felt strongly about something – I’m thinking in particular of the nuclear-free movement and the antiSpringbok tour rallies. These days, people tend to vent their respective spleens on talkback or social media, then feel their job of peaceful protest is done. So, I posed the question and asked people for their stories.

One of the first callers was a 17-year-old called Cara. She had marched in three rallies, she said – two climate change marches and one for Black Lives Matter. Not, she said, that she thought marching would actually bring about change. Nobody listens, she said, and the planet would be gone in 30 years.

I was stunned, both by her despondent tone and by her assertion that life, as we know it, would be over in three decades. I felt so incredibly sad for her. At 17, she thought there was no future, no hope, for her, for her peers and for civilisation.

I can remember feeling much the same when I was about 10. At that time, we were being told that an Ice Age would wipe out the world – there was even a suggestion that we put black polyurethane on the slopes of glaciers to try to warm up the Earth. Scientists from reputable universities around the world predicted the world would not survive much beyond the 21st centuries and for weeks, I had nightmares thinking about all the people I loved being no more.

I don’t think I despaired for myself – at that age, I was more concerned about my family not being around. Eventually, I forgot about dying and got on with living. I don’t know what it was that shifted my perspective – probably life got more interesting with beach trips, birthday parties and horse riding, and the idea of quaking in my shoes waiting to die didn’t seem terribly appealing.

After Cara’s call, I received plenty of messages from people of different generations who said they, too, had grown up thinking that the world would end in their lifetime.

One vividly recalled being a young thing in the ’60s and when the hole in the ozone was discovered, it was predicted mankind would be literally toasted by the year 2000 if action wasn’t taken. So, the girls gave up using aerosol hairspray on their beehives in a desperate bid to do their bit – and what do you know? The ozone hole shrank and Earth lived another day.

Jen said she was born a year after World War II ended. Living in England as a kid, she was worried sick every time there was a skirmish around the world, convinced it would lead to total annihilation. And yet, Jen’s made it to her 70s.

And my favourite from Mary, who said her youth was rather tainted by the thought of imminent nuclear destruction. And that’s why she put on the pink heels, painted on her lippy and drank Parfait d’Amour cocktails. A jazz age kind of approach to impending doom – that’s my kind of gal.

It made me so sad to hear Cara – not so much her words, but her tone. She sounded utterly without hope and looking at the figures, she’s not alone. We have so many sad and anxious young people these days.

We’ve all been there, thinking that the world would end in our lifetime. It hasn’t. We can all do better and be better in how we interact with the environment. But to give up on living is something we didn’t do, probably because we weren’t bombarded with relentless messages of doom from social media. Perhaps our job can be to teach the young ones to have fun. To mix a decent cocktail and to dress up and to dance. We should be sucking the marrow out of life while we have the luxury of being alive.

‘A jazz age kind of approach to impending doom – that’s my kind of gal’