Attacks on teenage climate advocates are inexcusable

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BY LILY REAVIS ’21 

The climate crisis has landed in the hands of teenage activists as far-right politicians continuously refuse to promote environmentalism and deny the reality of global warming. In response, commentators, talk show hosts and social media users have begun attacking these young conservationists in a show of character that is both troubling and disconnected. 

Aji Piper, a 19-year-old from Seattle, Washington, has been a climate activist for over half his life. At 15, he joined an ongoing lawsuit against the United States, arguing that the government violated his generation’s constitutional rights by failing to attempt to reduce the growing effects of climate change. 

“While I am not a lawyer nor a climate scientist, and I only recently came of voting age,” Piper told the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in 2017, “I know from studying climate science and living with the consequences of climate change today that my health, my community, and my future — and that of my generation — is at stake.” 

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, recently sailed the Atlantic Ocean to avoid contributing to travel-related carbon emissions on her way to a UN climate summit. 

At the summit, she told UN leaders, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” 

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she continued. “How dare you!” 

Still, critics have reframed the argument against climate change to instead focus on the validity of these teenagers’ personal claims. 

In an editorial for the New York Daily News, Adam Kalkstein wrote, “Despite the tearful claims of stolen childhoods, suffering and death, [Thunberg’s] generation has grown up in the most prosperous time in human history.” 

In a National Review editorial, Rich Lowry wrote that, “Children just repeat back what they’ve been told by adults, with less nuance and maturity.” 

A commentator for Fox News responded by calling Thunberg “a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left.” 

These attacks ignore the issues raised by activists like Thunberg and Piper, while also actively promoting the bullying and harassment of teenagers. 

Adult politicians and commentators have turned national attention away from the climate crisis, instead placing it on the actions of high school students. The hate that has been directed toward Thunberg since her UN speech on Sept. 18 is unhelpful and, frankly, disgusting. 

At this stage of the climate crisis, adults need to listen to the concerns being raised by the youngest citizens, even if doing so makes them uncomfortable. It is unacceptable for people like Lowry to accuse young activists of immaturity, especially in response to their UN addresses. 

In a phone interview on Sept. 19, Democratic New Jersey Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker said, “Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. It is a dire, existential crisis that we are facing.” 

“Young people are the biggest population bubble going through America right now,” he added. “They have the ability to sway most every election.” 

“Climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole,” Booker said. “It is a dire, existential crisis that we are facing. And it demands [of] all of us a lot more engagement: a lot more activism.” 

People like Thunberg and Piper have taken the lead on an issue that elected officials have failed to address. Attacking their characters is a heartless waste of time and energy that ignores everything they are fighting for. 

The climate crisis does not possess the leadership it requires. Young activists who have chosen to fill this position deserve support, praise and the attention of adult change-makers. 

“Leaders create the conditions that make change possible,” Booker said. 

Thunberg is trying to create those conditions. Unless her bullies undergo a drastic shift of opinion and reframe their climate crisis action plans, that change will never happen.