Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to a new study, most Millennials don’t make a personal effort to address climate change, but they are keen for someone else to sort it out.
Breaking: Millennials Think About Climate Change Differently Than Anyone Else
by Emma Loewe, MBG Editorial
September 25, 2017 3:00 AM
When it comes to easing climate change, a lot of the onus is placed on millennials. Considering environmental issues garnered mainstream attention as they were growing up, and their future is less certain than that of generations past, it makes sense that 20- and 30-somethings are tasked with such a big responsibility. But are they up for the challenge?
A new study asked thousands of millennials how they’re taking action on environmental issues, and their answers were a mixed bag. While millennials are reportedly less inclined to take small personal actions like recycle, ditch plastic water bottles, and adjust the thermostat to save energy, they are significantly more likely to support companies that they perceive to have strong environmental values. The Shelton Group, the eco-minded market research firm behind the study, has an interesting theory as to why this is.
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Read more: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/how-millennials-think-about-climate-change
The report is available here.
The authors of the report suggest that the reason millennials don’t embrace recycling or turning down the heat in cold weather is that … many Millennials may not be as concerned about personal actions because they feel the problems are too big to solve this way. …
I guess that is one possible explanation.
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The ‘snowflake’ generation (also known as the me,me, generation) are happy to complain about anything so long as ‘someone does something’. I think the old expression “all mouth & no trousers” summed it up very well. Any dissent is met with charges of Discrimination ; ‘Racism, ageism, sexism’ etc. All we need to do is wait as the attention span is very short. Voting age needs to be at least 21!
Of course this is the reaction they would have…..it’s the same reaction almost all people have
When the biggest mouth pieces are spending billions on homes, private jets….doing everything in their power to increase their “foot print”
…they got the message loud and clear
Maybe they just want to “change the world” but not change anything they do?
Buy their smart phones but only if they are made from recycled plastic?
Buy the gas for their cars but only from companies that have a windmill in their commercials? etc. etc.
I always get a kick out of the arguments that ‘personal action isn’t enough’. The heck it’s not…the ‘solutions’ they claim to solve via the State are *based* in personal action..being forced upon other people.
The personal action argument is true for them because they won’t actually *choose* to make the changes in their own lives and they’re looking for excuses. I’ve had pushback on this from some who say govt doesn’t make people choose ‘personal actions’, so I say OK, I’ll support your global warming laws as long as they contain an out for people to choose their own personal actions. After all, if you tell me it won’t impact personal actions, there’s no reason not to exclude personal actions from the laws. Of course, they know all along the point of such law is compelling ‘personal actions’, but they don’t like to ‘think of it that way’. It doesn’t matter how they ‘like to think of it’, the actual conditions are the actual conditions and my proposal merely highlighted what they don’t want to think about.
IF the people complaining about warming *actually* personally took drastic action in the numbers they claim to have, carbon emissions would be slashed a tremendous amount and not require one single law to do so. The actual problem is they won’t choose to live the ideals they claim to value, not that they have an issue getting the State to force other people to live actions these voters won’t even choose voluntarily on their own.
Indeed, it is said the measure of a man is his ability to live up to his ideals.
This is presumptive of Nobel ideals of course.
Especially when no-one is looking.
I once saw a terminal case of hypocrisy on a car bumper sticker which said “Your smoking pollutes my air”.
Sitting right next to the obligatory CND sticker.
True.
CND sticker?
Peace symbol – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Millennials are fairly simple folk,
Offer them free stuff and you’ll have their vote.
They have abundant climate loathing
Faux outrage; do nothing
While the liberals quack on about their invented climate non-problem they meanwhile import a violent, utterly hostile, barbaric totalitarian alien culture and it’s soldiers as fast as they possibly can so that these millennials will shortly be a despised and persecuted minority in their own countries. You would think it would be impossible to be as insane as the liberals – but it isn’t.
The climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans. Our climate has always included extremem weather events. The real culprit here is Mother Nature. If you want climate justice then try sueing Mother Nature in the world court. Lots o luck in collecting on a judgement against Mother Nature.
Two additional problems with involving Mother Nature, that I read somewhere:
1. Mother Nature bats last.
2. Mother Nature owns the stadium.
Great two lines. (Wish you could remember who said them. lol)
“Two additional problems with involving Mother Nature, that I read somewhere:”
Here’s another:
Or they could be preoccupied with actual important things, like paying off student loan debt, getting a job, affording their lifestyle, worrying about the future with the omnipresent threat imposed by AI and robotics, among a zillion other things.
When there’s nothing to worry about, it’s hard to convince youth of an impending doom presented by a non-existential threat.
More than likely preoccupied with how many facebook likes they have.
I don’t have the answer, but I myself advise my grandchildren that unlike the certainty of the message they receive at school, there is no proof that CO2 is causing harm and there is considerable proof it is doing good. I discuss the greening of the planet, the use of CO2 in greenhouses, crop yields and what the greening does for natural habitat.
I tell them to give the answers the teacher wants but at least in your mind, question everything, explaining that that’s what a real scientist or smart person does. I explain the wrong way people used to think about the solar system for over a thousand years until a few smart scientists (Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, etc) started making observations that falsified the old stuff. I tell them that CO2 driven CAGW is relatively new and already the evidence is building that, at most, it has a minor effect. I tell them about what has happened to Predictions of decades ago. I tell them about what happened to ALL predictions of planetary disasters made in the past (man caused global freezing, mass starvation, etc.) and that the chances of the present CAGW theory being a serious matter for the future is shaping up to be just the same old hype. I tell them the secret ingredient that worriers don’t know about! Human ingenuity and how it has wiped out so many diseases, made inventions that help us accomplish big tasks and solve problems. Kids like this kind of stuff from a wily old grandfather.
“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
― P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World
It’s hard to do much to save the Earth when you attention span is 20 seconds on the Internet.
Many of these comments about the Millennials do not reflect well on this blog. I see a lot of curmudgeons making wild generalizations and ad hominem comments based on anecdotal evidence. This is precisely the sort of thing this blog stands against. Who here sowed no wild oats, made no mistakes or held no silly opinions in their youth? I am grateful for those of you who are laboring in the trenches to stand against climate alarmism. We desperately need sanity injected into the debate. Don’t be your own worst enemies!
Look none of them have made a mistake that why they are such grumpy old men. The never enjoyed life.
And the occasional woman
…or alternatively they see the founding values of this nation trashed daily and feel great concern at the ” blame everybody else, government will solve every problem” mentality taught in schools and echoed by divide and conquer identity politics of the statist left.
Never the less, yes, the boomer generation has failed to teach personal responsibility and allowed a couple of generations to grow up thinking everybody but white privilege males, and Asians are owed.
“many Millennials may not be as concerned about personal actions because they feel the problems are too big to solve this way. …” They are right about that. In addition it is too big for even companies to solve. And that is true because it is not a humanly caused problem. It is nature doing its thing and we are no match to forces of that magnitude.
I think this is another fine example of the “unintended consequences” phenomenon. The left’s corruption of the education system to create designer-brains who will have the manipulators’ world view and join the march ever more resolutely toward progressive goals and ideals… these petri-dish warriors turned out to be pampered, disconnected and self-centred. ‘Someone else’ will take care of things. Victimhood 101 graduates don’t make a very good minions.
Designer Climate turned out to be an expensive Champagne sосiалisт cluster- botch that destroyed the Party itself. Whittling down from a 6C to 2C disaster, then 1.5C, and 1C(?)… grabbing on to hurricanes after a drought of 12yrs, wedging in earthquakes, Middle East wars, ladybugs with fewer spots, bending, blending malleable data as natural variation inexorably eats up the CAGW warming. Unintended consequences are funny that way.
…or alternatively they see the founding values of this nation trashed daily and feel great concern at the ” blame everybody else, government will solve every problem” mentality taught in schools and echoed by divide and conquer identity politics of the statist left.
Never the less, yes, the boomer generation has failed to teach personal responsibility and allowed a couple of generations to grow up thinking everybody but white privilege males, and Asians are owed.
I hate those article that use a special segment of a population as if it were the whole. There are all sort of millennials, a lots of them being outraged by national debt they are passed on, lower grade education they were given, and fake news and BS including (but alas not limited to) CAGW they are fed off. Those make extensive use, for better or worse, of Breitbart, 4chan, pepe memes, laugh at gender studies, recognize and scorn feminofascism, care about the prices of things, etc. Of course those just don’t hold stupid sign in the street and wouldn’t answer to pollsters (they scorn), even if those pollsters cared to look for them where they are (pollster looking elsewhere)
In some ways I can understand their position. When they are taught in school and blasted constantly all the AGW hype and then figure out the predictions don’t happen a large amount of cynicism takes hold. There may be hope yet for that generation.
Millennials think?