What kind of generation do we leave behind for the planet?

The Anthropocene

We have entered a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, an era where human induced behavior has led to dramatic impacts on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. The consequences from the last 200 years of capitalist globalisation include 65 million refugees, perpetual war, a mass extinction of plants and animals, and epic floods, historic droughts and super-storms becoming the norm. Projected disaster scenarios that assume apocalyptic proportions threaten the existence of the next generations. Our way of life today, with capitalism as its foundation, pays no heed to what nature is telling us.

The Problems

The next generations all over the globe face further threats such as breathing contaminated air, drinking contaminated water, eating contaminated food, pollution of the oceans and soil, and rising sea levels that will make it impossible to live in certain regions of the world. Many of these impacts will lead to more unstable regions around the world where people will fight each other for access to basic conditions for life such as water and arable land. The Poor who suffer the worst impacts today, who will continue to do so in the coming decades, heaping yet more despair upon the lives of millions of men, women and children.

Our Diminished Connection to Nature

Multi-national corporations have the monopoly of what they produce, which has put millions of people running small ventures out of business. This has forced many people to cities where they struggle to gather income for survival. This means that today for the first time in human history, more people live in the cities than in rural areas. Living in such urban environments has a tremendous impact on how we as human beings relate to nature, and fewer people contribute to the production of food. Instead multi-national corporations farm wastelands of monoculture maize and barley desserts where insects and other life cannot survive due to the use of pesticides. Many young people who grow up in cities are separated from a healthy, intimate relationship to soil, plant life, wild animals and insects, crops, and the other wonders that planet earth has to offer. This growing group of young people is alienated from the natural world, with little or no practical ability to work on the land to produce food.

Lacking the Big Perspective

The education system in general is good at educating individualists and consumers but fails to equip young people with comprehensible knowledge and solutions to the problems we face. This leads to a quasi-climate-literate youth who know something about bits and pieces but not enough in holistic terms – the causes and effects – and who thereby are not able to act into finding necessary solutions, but instead focus on smaller individual actions resulting in little or no impact. But how can we continue to be complicit in the loss of so much as we gain more knowledge and understanding about the implications of our actions? And how can young people gain global perspectives that create mobilization for sustainable living? The absence of a vision for the future paralyses the youth of today.

Training the Next Generations

There is a pressing need for the youth of today and tomorrow to comprehend the depth of the social and environmental crisis, its systemic nature and the magnitude of the required changes.  There is also a pressing need to hear the voice of youth and young people in debates about the future and to offer training to understand and take action towards what is needed to make the future possible. This means being equipped with skills and knowledge, which also extend into a larger context of globalisation, neo-liberalism and social spheres such as gender imbalances, oppression of women, racism – and how they impede the drive for making the necessary changes. Full participation with rights and responsibilities on a broad community base are essential for our long-term future viability.