The Canary the Ostrich and the Phoenix: Four Climate Takeaways From Young People

A few years ago I set up and ran a company that? tried to help young people adapt to climate change. I wanted to help youth make sense of a changing world.?

The students ended up teaching me more than I taught them:

TLDR: They get it already. They just want us to act.

Here are my top four insights from the young people I have had the privilege to share with and learn from.?

Climate Change Isn't Up for Debate        

I didn't meet a single climate change denier amongst young people. Not one. They all just wanted to understand more. They wanted more adults to act in concrete ways and to learn more about the growing few that are.?

To youth, believing in and understanding climate change is like understanding the composition of the air we breathe and the sun in the sky.?

Even if you stopped believing in or didn't understand the sun and air - they would still exist. The question for young people is not one of belief, but science, and how we use that to limit damage. ??

To the young people I meet-? some understand climate change,? some do not understand it: but most wilfully ignore it because they profit in some way from doing so.?

It is a lucid way of putting it.?

In the eyes of our young: it is unlikely to be the corporations that caused this mess that will be the ones to dig us out.        

To them 'CSR', 'ESG' and ‘sustainability’ are nonsense, they see the gap between the acronyms and actions, they see our limited efforts so far as fig leaves for continued harm and bad faith.

They see through the empty promises. the cover ups,? the ‘us and them’ the straw man arguments, the red team and blue team politicking.

For them there is just science, accountability and harm.?

From what I saw over 20 years working with corporations I have to agree. We can rebrand as ‘green’, bleating about ‘values’ and ‘purpose’ but until we get better at following through on the targets and pledges for the most important numbers, i.e. temperature and emissions,? our words are empty.?On the evidence so far 'ESG' by-and-large, is a sham.

Young people are beyond disillusioned; they are angry and scared.

They want us to step up. Instead they see our governments floundering, bickering, lost. To cling to power, leaders are creating division and diversion. Stoking riots, making hollow promises they know they won't keep, trying to keep us focussed on tax cuts and the latest version of MAGA, Brexit etc.

In the UK and US in the last couple of years at least, our leaders have literally spent more time breaking, denying breaking the law and being prosecuted, than acting on climate.?

The paradigm has shifted and grey suited, traditional politics cannot keep up. It's up to us as citizens. If we acknowledge there is a growing crisis, we do something about it. Until we get this right for our young people, our other projects, personal and professional, should be on hold.?

The Climate Crisis is a Mental Health Crisis.?        

Rates of youth anxiety, body dysmorphia and depression are all on the rise young people have become increasingly unhappy with their lives in the last 10 years according to the children's society. And it's getting worse. Why?

Inaction on climate isn't the only thing hurting our young people but it is a constant across all of them. Students have gone on strike and are disillusioned because we let them down.

When I asked young people what they care about - nearly all of them said that for their generation, climate is the only game in town. For them this is self explanatory.

They don't understand how we don't see it.?

They see a dwindling minority of adults denying that the game has changed. What alarms them more is those adults that see it but aren't brave enough to let go of the past and step up.?

Our young people are the canaries in the mine, they are not conditioned with the inertia, the newspapers, the denial narratives. They’re not protecting their corporate interests.

They are less able to bottle up and hide the physical and mental damage impending ecological collapse and increasing natural disasters does to them. It’s making them sick.?

There is still Time and Hope.?        

This is the most precious gift young people have given me over the last few years. The most valuable lesson I have learned.? They are asking us to prepare our governments, economies,? companies, lives and societies to give them the best chance for a peaceful, prosperous inhabitable earth.

?Everything from our curriculums to our companies to our careers have to change to give them a fighting chance against a changing climate.?

It sounds scary, *change* at that scale. But when you are young, you see very clearly that the past is holding us back more than it is driving us forward. That we have no alternative. That we are out of time. That we must change now.?

Collectively these lessons have taught me that we as adults need to do more. It was already my career but it is why, on top of ESD, I enrolled with Carbon13 last year.?To work on specific technical solutions to reduce emissions at scale fast.

The young people I met over the last few years don't want more bullshit. They just want to talk together about real practical solutions. They understand that it's not an ideology, political party, nationalism or shiny marketeered corporate value statements that will get us out of this.

Its science, concrete action, frank conversations, significant investment and fundamental change.?

Over the last few years, young people have given me the belief that we can set the scene for the next generation to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of the dirty past, escape our mistakes and fly off into a cleaner future.??Carbon13 have compounded that faith, Phil Hunter and Yubiao Niu have catalysed it.

Young people understand intuitively that on nation, religion and age group, sexuality gender and any other artificial axis we want to put in front of them, that never has been or will be us and them,? that it's just us, humanity, with our only weapons, humility, ingenuity, good business and science to fly with courage right into the biggest challenge and adventure we have ever faced.?

What I learned learned with the schools and universities is that young people don't really need to adapt.

It is us, working adults, that do, fast. It's not enough to simply recognise or bemoan the problem on social media: young people want us to *do* something about it.

As of now we are are blowing it. Our ostrich heads buried in the expanding sands of a warming planet. It is up to those who see, to help young people now. Consumers to custodians. Ostriches and Canaries to Phoenix's ASAP.