Youths should vote like leaders left us out in the cold
In the unrelenting claws of ice, Texas grinds to a shuddering halt. Climate change has done to Texas what even a global pandemic could not: The state is shut down.
As the cold seeped into my bones, I curled into an icy bed. Had I not been shivering, I would have told you I shook only from the burning anger and blistering outrage. Our government let us freeze. After deregulating the energy market and scorning federal recommendations to weatherize, Texas legislators now attempt to slink away as heads roll at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Unfortunately for them, young people will not so easily forget the chilling fear and cold despair with which we looked out at the unadulterated black that descended upon our cities. Under a starry night visible from within Houston, our entire electric grid flirted with total collapse. This world you would leave for us is dystopian.
A decade ago, the Texas environment I knew in elementary school was parched clay ground with foot-deep cracks that webbed across the playground and twisted our ankles. Since then, we have been ravaged by storms and floods we claim are once in 500 years but return every year. In between storm seasons of carrying out rotting waterlogged furniture, year after year record-shattering temperatures mark the increasingly unbearable summers. Then, we were held hostage by a frigid cold that drives hours-long lines for water and desperate prayers for warmth.
Like most of my generation — and unlike my elected officials — I realize the devastating impact of climate change on us. Growing up in Texas, we see how year after year our suffering is enhanced by the unflinching climate denialism and inaction from our lawmakers. From city councils to the Texas Legislature to the U.S. Congress, the fears and futures of younger generations are cast away and sold for profit. The land they intend to leave us is rotten, pillaged and little more than scorched, sodden and frigid earth.
We do not accept. Instead, we act. We organize strikes, sit-ins and protests to reclaim our space in the public narrative. We write letters, host town halls and lobby elected officials to demand climate action. Together, we’re building a movement.
Yet, there is no glory in youth organizing for climate action. Composing the waves of climate strikes and rumbles of protests, we are children whose childhoods have been robbed by decades of irresponsibility. As storms and strikes steal away precious days of school and summer, we desperately fight tooth and nail to confront the same institutions that we are taught protect us. We’re terrified, exhausted and possess neither the resources nor the expertise of the older generations who had the privilege of inheriting a livable world.
Four years ago I would’ve asked for a livable world to inherit.
But now — having counted every hour without power, every city without water, every time we’ve patched ourselves together after yet another climate disaster — I’m fighting for a livable world to grow up in. We cannot continue like this. To our parents, mentors, friends and leaders of the older generations: stand with us. Demand a crisis response to the climate crisis — if not for our sake, then for your own.
There is nothing to be gained and a world to be lost with the continued election of leaders who line their pockets at our expense. For now, we must resign ourselves to emailing, writing and calling their offices to demand climate action. But come their re-election, we should vote like our representatives left us out in the cold, because they did.
If we don’t act now, then when? If the collapse of functionality in Texas is not enough to persuade our lawmakers, then we — young and young-at-heart alike, liberals and conservatives alike — must either stand together to replace them or reckon with the consequences of how low they set the bar.
I, for one, have never been good at limbo.