Ten Reasons Why Millennials Believe in Climate Alarmism

2 January 2020

4.4 MINS

Back in 2012 The Australian published an article warning that by 2020 there would be hardly any more snow in Australia due to the catastrophic effects of climate change. According to Professor Katherine Pickering, from the Griffith School of Environment:

We’ve predicted by 2020 to lose something like 60 percent of the snow cover of the Australian Alps.

Well, that sure didn’t age well.

The increase in climate alarmism seems to mimic a growth in the number of younger generation protestors, with the 16-year-old Greta Thunberg leading from the front. Following on from this, climate strikes are growing in number and popularity, with the most recent protest amassing thousands of adolescents.

As an 18-year-old high school graduate myself, I empathise with the inclination of many in my generation to be alarmed about such environmental concerns. In fact, I was very much in the same boat earlier this year.

What are some of the reasons why so many young people are drawn to this polarising political issue?

1. A desire for something greater

‘You don’t understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger.’
~ Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

People are often psychologically attracted to committing to something greater than themselves. This forms the foundation for communities, military service, charity work and religious values etc. However, with the rise of climate alarmism, it seems that my generation are drawn to towards nothing less than ‘saving the world’. As Hosseini observes, we all search for something greater to form our identity.

2. A sense of legacy

‘If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.’
~ Benjamin Franklin

There is probably nothing more important than the legacy and memory that one leaves behind. Young people today, in particular, are faced with the existential fear that such a prospect may not be possible. Whether or not these alarmist predictions are true, a sense of legacy intertwines activist rhetoric and underlying dogma.

3. A spirit of fear

‘The most powerful motivator of all, is fear.’
~ Robert Wilson

If you were told that the world was ending in seventy years—give or take—would that not rightly invoke an emotional response? Well, what we’re seeing today is an emotionally-driven wave of environmental hysteria, closely mimicking Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Because we fear most what we cannot see.

 

4. A search for virtue

‘The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.’
~ Jawaharial Nehru

Across the ages, nothing seems more appealing than being validated by those around you. Greta Thunberg’s recent ‘rebuke’ to the United Nations—and especially the thunderous applause and validation which followed—taps into the deeper desire for youth around the world to similarly find such praise. As Nehru rightly observes, we’re all filled with an earnest longing to be seen as virtuous.

 

5. A desire for control

Control desire: refers to a subject of circumstance or relationship that an individual may want to exert control over.’
~ Wikipedia

The need for control in an ever-present prediction of apocalyptic chaos seems to be the pervading ‘atmosphere’ for young people today. Without a God or higher power to submit to, human beings’ greatest desire is to be in control of their own life and destiny. Such a desire to control one’s own world may well be fuelling the climate alarmism.

6. A rise in self-esteem dogma

‘There is a real danger in believing it when people use the word ‘Genius’, and it’s even more dangerous when we let hubris tell ourselves we are.’
~ Ryan Holiday, ‘Ego is the Enemy’

Both in public and private schools throughout Australia, students are pushing for academic excellence. This feeds the constant self-esteem rhetoric that ‘you can do anything’ and ‘you can change the world’ which youth today have been raised upon. This is quintessential to youth protest and climate alarmism that we see today in our younger generation.

7. An anti-establishment psyche

‘Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.’
~ Oscar Wilde

Down through the ages, youth have been stereotyped and often fulfil the ‘anti-establishment’ role in society. Statistics show that the majority of youth are of a progressive political inclination. This changes overtime, as age brings responsibility, and breeds conservative values as the following graph of the recent UK election demonstrates:

8. The progressive virtue of victimhood

‘Claiming to be a victim gives people a perverse authority. Subjective experience becomes key… as victim status can buy special privileges.’
~ Claire Fox

It seems that victimhood is the new virtue. Nothing achieves more power like victimhood. This has now become the ‘go to’ emotional heart-string of the alarmist movement, as Thunberg’s refrain: “You have stolen my future!” Not bad for someone who was Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019!

9. A quasi-religious faith

‘Animism is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.’
~ The Oxford Dictionary

In today’s zeitgeist, the UN debates whether “Mother Earth” deserves human rights. In Kyrgyzstan, the parliament sacrificed seven sheep to dispel evil spirits, and it is estimated 40% of the world holds to some form of animistic belief. Closer to home, due to the integration of aboriginal culture and dream time spirituality, ‘Land’ has become an increasingly valued concept in modern society, to which we now seem to attribute spiritual worth. It seems such ethereal concepts may be fuelling a rise in youth climate alarmism.

10. A lack of hope beyond this world

‘The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.’
~ Proverbs 10:28

Of greatest concern is the rising tides of depression and ennui within our youth. Without a Biblical worldview, climate change offers no hope beyond the catastrophe that is to come. This lack of hope present in today’s western culture is a large factor in youth searching for a better future.

 

While I empathise with such a desire to be alarmed, what made the difference for me was being more widely informed and understanding the difficulty to accurately predict both the climate and its impacts. Predictions that fall short even from a few years ago like here, here and here reaffirm our inability to foresee in years to come, just how our Earth will react.

Moreover, understanding Australia’s past climate of bushfires and temperature and our recent cooling period, made me more sympathetic to a subdued alarmist perspective. It is such a desire to learn, to be informed and to understand both the political and scientific influences, that our younger generation should latch onto. For my greatest fear would be a descent into an emotionally-driven echo chamber of hysteria and irrationality.

___

Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash.

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13 Comments

  1. Litsa Grace 4 January 2020 at 10:19 am - Reply

    Luke Powell – whoever you are – I hope you are planning to enter politics. We desperately need more people like you in parliament!

  2. Jay 8 January 2020 at 3:43 pm - Reply

    You climate denialism is telling. Perhaps the real reason young people want action on climate is because it directly impacts their very existence. This sort of thing will not date well granted we have 40 years of data to prove that the climate is getting hotter already. 2019 was the hottest year on record!

  3. Carolyn 8 January 2020 at 4:15 pm - Reply

    Dear Luke, you are clearly a very thoughtful and well-read individual. I agree with you that the factors you mention can all contribute to young people wanting to be part of social movements. But another factor which you haven’t mentioned is scientific evidence. Has your reading included anything published by the IPCC? Or perhaps NASA or the CSIRO? They provide compelling evidence that we really should be alarmed about climate change. It’s really important to engage with the primary sources and not simply accept motivated reasoning that lacks scientific rigour or peer review. I hope you’ll expand your reading and become even more widely informed in future.

  4. David 9 January 2020 at 4:01 pm - Reply

    Thank you Luke, very well written.

  5. […] predictable as always, conservationists and opportunistic politicians are blaming these fires on climate change. Before I get attacked for being a climate change denier – I am not. But I am also a climate […]

  6. Ian 15 January 2020 at 7:38 pm - Reply

    For those above that quote evidence from the IPCC, NASA and the CSIRO, you have obviously not done your research. All three of these organizations have been caught cooking the figures to realize a desired outcome, that the world is heating up. They ignore the much hotter periods in our recent history, and the actual data from temperature stations in Australia and America that show no appreciable warming in the last 30 years. I remember when i attended school in the 60’s we got to go home after lunch if the temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit ( 37.7 ) C, a situation that used to occur at least 4 – 5 times in December before the Christmas Holidays. There were days in January in the mid 40’s on a regular basis. In some recent years in Melbourne i have not even gotten to use the swimming pool due to the cool weather. Go and have a look at the history of temperatures registered in the 1850’s and 1870’s in Australia especially places like Bourke in NSW. Very hot!! Have a look at the predictions that were made by Climate alarmists about Sea Level, Glaciers, Polar Bear populations, Australian Snow levels, and the size of the ice sheets in Antarctica and the Arctic from the 1980’s onward. None of them have eventuated Fluctuations yes, but no alarming trends at all. If you want to claim the climate has changed due to man’s activity, then show us some real evidence that things are different than they were over the last 100 years, not some rigged computer models or cloudy temperature figures. Use your brains and stop following the crowd of sheep. The evidence is clear of one of the greatest scientific frauds of all time, and you will all feel very foolish when it all comes crashing down, or our country is an economic and social wreck because of stupid knee jerk reactions to deception on a massive scale. And 2019 was no way the hottest year on record!! I have lived in much hotter ones when you were possibly not even born.

  7. Martin 24 January 2020 at 8:06 pm - Reply

    Thanks Ian
    I have seen those fact as well. it would seem they are overlooked, deliberately. thanks for taking the time to write.

    We need to be good stewards of what we have , but not worhship the earth. Everthing cycles.,and has done since I and others were born (read, I love a sunburnt country and other thing from long ago).

    One day I might write about the fires that were deliberatley lit in 2019 (over 100 people caught in NSW alone, plus who they caught in qld and vic), as part of this”climate change” overreaction

  8. Miriam Harman 24 January 2020 at 9:51 pm - Reply

    Dear Ian, I suppose you can go and tell that to the nation islands of Tuvalu and kirrabas as well as the people that are seeing their beach property homes around the coast being eaten away, I do find your denial of science and your constant stating scientific communities have cooked the books A bit difficult to understand. I find it a bit difficult to see how NASA would Doctor photos and why they would wish to. I do find it interesting that most of believe in medical science and vaccines etc but not environmental science. I also grew up in the 60s and do not remember any of the temperatures that we are getting now and I hate hot weather so would’ve remembered them. We as christians were charged with looking after the earth and I look around and cannot see that we are good stewards of what God has given us.

  9. […] was only a few short months ago that the world was in the grip of climate hysteria, with Australia suffering one of the worst bushfire seasons on record. Many on the left took this […]

  10. […] this is apocalyptic climate alarmism we’re talking about, pushed by the same kind of people who promote all kinds of catastrophic […]

  11. […] like myself would be writing about conservative issues, when so many my age are in lockstep with mainstream […]

  12. […] great battle over global warming has always been identified as the authority of science. But now, Moore’s documentary reveals that […]

  13. […] group in focus was members of the homosexual community who wanted to marry. Last year, it was schoolchildren who felt threatened by climate change, and biological men seeking to identify as women and compete […]

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