Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Oil industry consultant Dana Nuccitelli, writing for the Guardian, has launched yet another green attack on democracy, by suggesting that older people who voted for Brexit, or who vote against green policies, are committing “intergenerational theft”.
The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change
Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations
In last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU, while about 58% over the age of 45 voted to leave.
This generational gap is among the many parallels between Brexit and climate change. A 2014 poll found that 74% of Americans under the age of 30 support government policies to cut carbon pollution, as compared to just 58% of respondents over the age of 40, and 52% over the age of 65.
Inter-generational theft
The problem is of course that younger generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we make today for much longer than older generations. Older generations in developed countries prospered as a result of the burning of fossil fuels for seemingly cheap energy.
However, we’ve already reached the point where even contrarian economists agree, any further global warming we experience will be detrimental for the global economy. For poorer countries, we passed that point decades ago. A new paper examining climate costs and fossil fuel industry profits for the years 2008–2012 found:
“For all companies and all years, the economic cost to society of their CO2 emissions was greater than their after‐tax profit, with the single exception of Exxon Mobil in 2008”
…
It now falls to the US to do better than the UK. Risk management and the well-being of future generations must trump ideology and fear in the November elections. We simply can’t afford two of the world’s superpowers being dictated by populism and xenophobia at the expense of our youth’s future.
Most old people I know would throw themselves into a fire if they thought it would somehow improve the lives of their grandkids. Claiming old people en-masse do not care about the young is utterly obscene.
When older people vote for Brexit, or vote against fanatics who think it is OK to advocate disenfranchising groups who oppose their views, just maybe it is because they have the life experience to see through the lies of would be tyrants.
The world the young inherit is the outcome of effort put in by previous generations. To suggest that this toil is to be rewarded by denying those that did the work any say in what happens to it is beyond idiotic. Do any of these people think about what they are saying.
If he lived in GB or the EU he would be sued for slander.
Speak freely America! 😉
OT, but these people are BARKING MAD !!!!!
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU-referendum-German-French-European-superstate-Brexit
My daughter and her partner are slightly older than I was when, as a naive youngster, I voted in the ’75 referendum, and voted to Remain in the EEC. That’s because I believed the likes of Heath and his lies about the Common Market not being a risk to our sovereignty.
Well, I learned from that mistake (as a lot of fishermen did too) and over the years have got to understand the EU and it’s despotic rulers; its undemocratic ways; and its expansionist designs for the future. Most of all, I feared for the fact that the Commission and the Council of Ministers could not be sacked by the electorate: They controlled our very lives and corrupted everything they touched. I voted to Leave. Not so much Brexit, as Fixit.
But my daughter and her partner voted to remain. when I asked why they said that it would probably be good for their businesses – but couldn’t explain how. They knew nothing of the democratic deficit and had no idea hoe the EU worked nor who was in charge.
I’m glad Leave won because if Remain had squeaked it there would never be another chance of a referendum in 40 years’ time that would allow today’s young to correct their mistake.
The full proof of the fact that Leave is the answer will be shown by the number of other countries who will follow suit over the coming years. Europe the Continent will survive and democracy will win.
Well said Harry. I also voted to stay in the ‘Common Market’ in 1975 and spent the last 40 years regretting it. As a young person, I knew everything, as we all think we do at that age. As you get older your gain wisdom and clear black and white issues fade into shades of grey.
” Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”
Words from the American Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, those under 40 have no experience of living without the EU so were in no position to judge the difference.
If this shows anything at all, it is that with age comes wisdom.
Only if you let it.
Dana is no spring chicken and wisdom has not found him yet.
How cute. Just which age cohort is demanding free college, free health care (including sex changes), free cell phones, free food, free housing?
Intergenerational theft, indeed – they plan to have the next generation (as yet unborn, most of them) pay for all of their free stuff.
Wups, wait a minute, there’s a slight flaw here! The “free stuff brigade” is also overwhelmingly opposed to children being born; “overpopulation” you know. Hmmm. I think they’re going to find themselves in a bit of a pickle in not too long…
Nigel Farage tells European Parliament “You’re not laughing now”
Darn .. he let loose at them, didn’t he.
You could almost feel their guilty consciences burning.
Great to watch and listen to !!
Wow, where do you find politicians like this, please send him to Canada.
Another fine performance from Nigel as he tells them a few home truths (& gets a good amount of support from other MEPs at the end).
I still think UK would be better in (& the system was changed) than out, where we have no influence.
40 yrs ago we shafted the commonwealth in favor of our ‘new best EU friends’, now we have to go cap in hand & re-negotiate; we wont get good deals & I don’t blame them.…people have long memory’s.
What I do fear is a return to tribalism, (verbal & physical post brexit racist attacks have already started), as a few nasty thugs think they now have a mandate; similar to 1930s Germany, we should remember what happened next !!
Almost all of them sit there knowing they are just puppets on the Eurocrats string and they hate it when one of them tells the truth.
Wisdom comes with age, not youth. Those who can remember the UK before the EU (pre-1973) wanted it back. Nuccitelli is too young to understand.
Those with age have the ability to look back and recognize mistakes and try to fix them. A trait sorely lacking in those who have no time to look back on.
With Dana “Nutty” Nuccitelli, it is hard to know where to begin, as he employs logical fallacy after logical fallacy and blithely spews myths and outright falsehoods as if they were accepted truths. His use of intergenerational differences is classic Alinskyism. He opines that the climate issue is about “risk management” vs ideology, a clear case of both psychological projection and circular reasoning.
The target of his political screed is of course “the youth” with whom he hopes to whip up emotion, since emotion is all he, and his fellow Climatists really have.
Thanks, Eric, for reading one of Dana’s missives so I don;t have too.
His writing (leaving aside what he writes) is awful – dense in both senses of the word.
You’ve saved me 15 minutes of my life – thanks again 🙂
Welcome 🙂
So as usual the Guardian has got it wrong. Yes man pensioners did vote for exit but it still would not have won but for as one young man put it So many of our generation voting on facebook but not going out in the rain to put in an actual vote.
Even this is misguided as the real reason was that most of the lower income groups turned out in force for exit as they have already seen significant dumping of unemployed EU entrants in their areas. this is already making depressed areas that have houses that sold previously for around £100,000 compared to five times that in London now virtually unsaleable at any price. They fear, and rightly, the effect leading to to same as part of Liverpool where the council sold homes for £1 to any non druggie. ( Of course the did not admit that straight.) Many of these voters still have 90% left to repay on the mortgages on these houses. These people know that remain in is not a vote for the same but for even more of EU legislation to degrade their lives for the benefit of the few.
Of course this sort of person is not a Guardian reader who is typically a university lecturer on an EU grant.
what surprises me is that so few of these university lecturers seem to be able to do basic arithmetic to see the Guardian is talking through its metaphorical anal orifice.
“Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations”. Newsflash Dana; youth always bear the brunt of the decisions made by the older generation (as in 1914, 1939, 1963, 2001, 2003 etc etc) that’s how life works.
Regarding the vote to leave; If the EU of 2016 had been the EU of the seventies no brits would have voted to join in the first place. They are leaving now largely because of the betrayal of EU principles and the abandonment of democracy by the unelected despots of the European Commission, which is the only group in EU government which can propose and formulate law. It may be old fashioned,but quite understandable, to think that one’s own parliament of one’s own country should be making the laws for that country.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that if there were obvious advantages to staying in the EU the British would be smart enough to see them and vote accordingly. One gets the impression that the disappointed whingers of the “remain” party are so because they see themselves losing some undeserved advantage which they will no longer have.
One also can’t help but think that so many UK establishment figures are so upset by the vote simply because they have now lost access to all those wonderful sinecures in Brussels to which they feel entitled by their years (few as they may actually have been) of “service” to the nation
Chris: Totally agree. well said. Particularly the first para.
Learning comes from making mistakes; wisdom comes from learning. Nutti thinks he’s never made a mistake, therefore he has no wisdom.
Its too early to say with any certainty whether “In” or “Out” was the correct choice. However it is difficult to see how the EU can survive the economic and political tensions inherent in its current aims and chosen directions.
To the youth of the UK I say: Look at the levels of youth unemployment across Europe because that is the reality that the EU is delivering to your age cohort.
Out was the correct choice – I didn’t meet anyone voting remain who was voting for the EU that actually existed.
“… Dana Nuccitelli, writing for the Guardian, has launched yet another green attack on democracy, by suggesting that older people who voted for Brexit, or who vote against green policies, are committing “intergenerational theft”.”
No, he is demonstrating that older people are generally harder to fool and less gullible than younger people.
As an American I had no idea the extent of control the EU had over people. Thanks to all who commented. My only questions are why wasn’t the vote higher to leave, and why wasn’t it done sooner.
So what the Guardian is saying is that they know better what’s best for the children than the dumb old adults? Who appointed the Guardian as Lord of the Relm? Who died and left them in charge?
Rather than think of it as “intergenerational theft”, Dana should look at it as parents taking something away from a child before they hurt themselves with it…
Of course, Dana, an American who lives and works in the US and only writes for the Graniaud, knows what’s best for the youth of Britain or anywhere else. And based on what he does write, regularly, it’s not clear if Dana knows what’s good for Dana, let alone somebody standing several thousand miles away.
Now if Dana could just get the youth on social media to complain that it was not the right result last night when Iceland beat England 2-1……
🙂
Drillbit could use a Drill Dr. ………
He’s not too sharp …..
On purpose ?
I’m spending my kid’s inheretance, so what?
Sorry Dana, we can’t help it all the young voters were out saving the whales, hugging the trees or mounting sit ins on some vital issue and had no time to go and vote. They all clearly had more important things to do because their turnout was the lowest of all age groups.
The reality is the young didn’t turn up to vote because they obviously didn’t care. One could argue they were no more likely to vote for your crazy green politics, than they were to give two fingers up to the establishment and vote for a Brexit.
Political lesson in this is those who actually get off their backsides and vote determine outcomes.
“In last week’s Brexit vote results, there was a tremendous divide between age groups. 73% of voters under the age of 25 voted to remain in the EU”
And 73% of folks under 25 can’t tie their shoelaces or wipe their own asses which raises a bit of a dilemma for their oldies who know better than them what life’s all about, but have to shoulder the blame for infantilising their offspring.
Day of the Nuccitellis comes to mind. Bring back the Hammer Films studio for another horror flick.
I’m still waiting for the eminent Sean Penn to opine after saving Venezuela.
Bite your tongue!
My favorite bilingual pun was “No Sean Penndejo”