“Your generation will be the one to save the world.”
It’s an oft-repeated platitude which I adopted from a very young age. At five years old, I was shutting off every light in my house to save power, regardless of whether people were using that light. At six, I was ensuring that every fish my parents bought for dinner was sustainably harvested. And at seven, I had convinced myself that I and I alone could and would fix climate change. After all, it didn’t seem like any of the adults cared. Nothing was being fixed. Even as a child, I could read the news, know the history, and understand the signs.
My generation would be the one to save the world. I had to save the world.
![Gen Z and ESG: The Climate Quitting Revolution Gen Z and ESG: The Climate Quitting Revolution](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc66ceb4a-9d49-494d-aa50-5684c096d7b7_1200x600.jpeg)
This phenomenon of climate anxiety among Gen Z is not a unique experience. In a 2021 survey of young people by the University of Bath, 59% of participants reported feeling very or extremely worried about climate change. Younger people also tend to support more radical solutions to climate change, with 48% of adults aged 18-29 supporting the eradication of fossil fuels as opposed to 20% of adults aged 65+, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. The rise of climate-based litigation (2180 cases worldwide at the start of 2023) is a testament to this generational sense of climate responsibility, with the vast majority of cases in the public eye being led by or for young people.
This train of thought is mostly guided by reality. After all, if carbon emissions continue at their current rate, the younger generations (Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha) could experience 6-7 °F of lifetime warming, as opposed to the older generations (Greatest, Silent, and Baby Boomers) experiencing 1.3-3.4 °F of warming. This is double the amount of global warming. Climate change is an issue created and exacerbated by people who will not be alive to see the repercussions. It makes sense that young people often feel so responsible, and often hopeless, for the environment.
But the history of climate change is not the only reason young people feel individually responsible. The big villain of this narrative is not the older generations: it is the propaganda touted by massive corporations in order to shroud their own destruction and deceive the public into blaming themselves for global warming and environmental decay.
Observe the oil and gas titan BP’s (formerly British Petroleum’s) 2023 diminution in carbon reduction goals from 35-40% reduction to 20-30% reduction following the company’s incredibly profitable 2022 ($27.7 billion in profit, over double the profits of 2021). Indeed, the English company with its recycle-green logo had carbon emissions rise in 2023 for the first time since 2019, despite promising to scale back their emissions. Both BP and Shell, another one of the world’s largest oil companies, are still active members of at least eight anti-climate lobby groups that have “boasted about quashing the very carbon-reduction policies the oil giants publicly claim to support.” Neither company disclosed these affiliations in their public declaration and actions against climate change to supposedly promote corporate transparency. The deception goes into the very rhetoric of these corporations. These are no outliers either, as across all major oil companies, climate change is discussed as a mere “risk” rather than a reality.
These companies do more than just lie about their carbon emissions; they deceive the public into believing that climate change is an issue individuals are responsible for and must solve. Look no further than yet a third oil superpower, ExxonMobil, which notoriously challenged scientific climate change in the public sphere throughout the 1980s and 1990s despite having an extraordinarily accurate predictive model of global warming through internal scientists. Even today, ExxonMobil continues to speak about climate change in a way that “mimics tobacco industry propaganda,” downplaying the severity of global warming and blaming consumers for demanding fossil fuels instead of itself for providing them. The very concept of a personal carbon footprint, a commonly discussed subject in climate discussions, was popularized by BP as a part of a $300 million marketing campaign in the mid-2000s. Similarly, Exxon, Chevron, and the rest of the plastics industry spent millions advertising the power of “recycling” plastic, despite the fact that less than 10% of all plastic gets recycled due to the cost of reusing the material. These corporations knew about the reality of recycling since the 1970s, but they still placed the blame on the individual consumer with mantras like: recycle your plastic! Even though it ignores the fact that plastic production is expected to triple by 2050.
The consumer-centric language and model of climate change prevention has sunk very deeply into public thought. Children are taught to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Commuters are encouraged to bike and take public transportation. Local composting programs seek to end food waste. That is all objectively good, but those efforts miss the broader picture. The average annual carbon footprint per person in the United States is 16 tons, which is exceptionally and dangerously high. Taylor Swift, who has been lambasted repeatedly for her carbon emissions due to her private flights, released over 8000 tons of carbon from her flights alone in 2022. In comparison, in 2023, BP released 315 million tons of carbon. The top twenty fossil fuel companies (Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Shell, Exxon, etc.) have contributed to over one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions – 480 billion tons of carbon and methane since 1956. To claim that the average consumer, or even Taylor Swift, is in charge of reversing climate change is to overlook the true culprits and, thus, to fall victim to their propaganda.
I am tired of being told that I am in charge of saving the world. For one, it goes against every moral and legal standard in the Western world. Why should the victim be in charge of remedying the criminal damage? Even non-Western philosophies, such as Confucianism, decree that problems are best solved through mass action rather than individual efforts. But also, this phrase, as well-intentioned and optimistic as it is, is just another form of environmental propaganda. It is a way for those in power, for the ultra-wealthy and the mega-corporations, for the old and successful who will not live long enough to see the repercussions of climate change to get out of actual change.
The young are not in power. I am a twenty-year-old college student. It will be fifteen years until I can theoretically run for President. That is simply too late for the global warming crisis. Humanity does not need promises and reassurance that young people will eventually fix the world’s problems. It needs tangible action from the people who are actually in charge right now.
“Your generation will be the one to save the world.”
Maybe we will. But do not use that as an excuse. The world cannot and will not wait for Gen Z to come into political and corporate power. It does not start with us. It ends with us. It must start with our politicians, our CEOs, our presidents, our boards of trustees. So, this is a message to Joe Biden, Tim Cook, Donald Trump, Rishi Sunak, and every single person who has the power to curb carbon emissions, influence politics, and undo global warming. Biden: quit overpromising to curb oil drilling and to increase international climate finance appropriations when you either cannot or will not do either. Achieve what you promised to your voters. Cook: we know that you are promising to improve Apple’s climate impact. Words are not enough, especially with Apple’s well-documented history of child slavery and environmental destruction through cobalt mining. Reduce your company’s millions of tons of carbon emissions per month and curb your immense and toxic electronic waste. Trump: very simply, stop lying. When you were President, you gutted environmental agencies and protective regulations, and even today, you continue to deceive your voter base by calling climate change a “hoax” and swearing to “protect” them by ending the most basic environmental protections. Science refutes you. The world refutes you. And Sunak: the UK used to be a leader in curbing emissions until you announced your plan to “max out” oil production and lower your environmental ambitions of a country that has the full economic potential to be as ambitious as possible. The world sees you. History sees you.
Stop the shifting of burdens. Stop the platitudes. Stop the propaganda.
And maybe, with a lot of luck, the generation to blame for the state of the world will ultimately be the one to save it.