Baby boomers dropped the ball on climate change

Watching hundreds of young people converge last week on political power centers to demand action on climate change brought a sense of déjà vu.

Nearly 50 years ago, the first Earth Day launched with protests, community cleanups and tree plantings. Although founded by then 54-year-old Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis., it harnessed youthful energy to coalesce into a powerful environmental movement that led to a decade of change, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the enactment of the Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species acts.

I was 16 years old on that first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, and recall believing that if we all just did our part, we could fix things. There was hope rather than the “panic” and despair that permeates today’s conversation. Over the years, I continued to participate in many Earth Days and other environmental events and believed the environmental movement would conquer.

But it wasn’t enough, and we did not sustain the strong bipartisan support needed to keep environmental issues front and center.

“Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders,” according to the Earth Day website.

While the environmental/conservation movement evolved and continued its fight, the bipartisanship and the political prowess that came with it waned.

My generation, the baby boomers, dropped the ball we had carried faithfully at the start.

We bought into — literally — the marketing that bottled water was better for us and littered the oceans with our one-use plastic waste.

American automakers started to design and build electric cars in the 1990s to meet California emission standards. About 10 years later, General Motors destroyed about 5,000 working models — cars that people leasing them begged to keep. If you haven’t seen the 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car,” check out the YouTube preview.

Imagine if the auto companies had wholeheartedly embraced electric and low-emission cars 30 years ago. Perhaps most of us would be driving them now.

Instead of demanding them, instead of saying no to the fossil fuel industry, we bought gas-guzzling SUVs to drive around town.

California continued to push emission standards that are more strict than the federal ones and has been joined by a dozen states and the District of Columbia. Last month, Colorado adopted the standards with a goal of zeroor low-emission vehicles accounting for a low-percentage of the state’s sales by 2023.

President Donald Trump has vowed to revoke California’s right to set its own standards — and if he’s successful, other states, too, would have to drop efforts to reduce emissions and get more electric cars on the road. The states, including Colorado, have said they’ll fight back. Trump and the GOP seem not to have noticed that “the times they are a-changin’” and the partisan split on environmental issues that erupted in the 1980s and ’90s is evaporating.

A pair of recent polls show that Republicans aged 18 to 34 — millenial and Gen-Z voters — believe climate change is a serious threat and are worried about the damage humans are causing to the planet. Young Republicans and Democrats equally support a carbon tax, reduced methane emissions and a national renewable energy standard, according to a survey by Ipsos and Newsy.

At last week’s Climate Strike in Denver, 12-year-old Riley Minogue-Rau said: “I want to die of old age. Not because of climate change.” Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gorman said: “We’re just a small voice of thousands. And I think it’s unfair that those in power aren’t listening.”

We — all of us, from every generation — must listen and find the leaders who will take action. We have no more time to waste because, indeed, “our house is on fire.”