By Gary W. Kenny

Recently my wife said something that shocked me. “If I were a young person today, I might not have kids.” What?! I immediately thought of our own two children, now in their 30s, and the prospect of not having them in our lives. They were a delight to raise (well, mostly) and continue to bring us unbounded joy. Life is unimaginable without them. What my wife said next placed her jolting words into a context I could appreciate. “What kind of world, what future, are we leaving young people when global collapse caused by a warming climate seems imminent?” On her mind was the April report by Environment and Climate Change Canada which stated that, on average, Canada is experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, and Northern Canada three times the rate. Also in my wife’s thoughts was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) October 2018 jaw-dropping report warning that the planet’s average temperature is rising faster than previously thought and, without urgent action, will almost certainly result in a global cataclysm. We need only look in our own backyard for evidence of pending climate change-caused catastrophe. The past decade has seen an astonishing run of record-breaking storms, forest fires, droughts, heat waves, and floods in Canada and around the world. Scientists say the situation can only get worse. Climate change deniers take note: These projections are not mere theoretical musings. They are born of detailed scientific analyses of real time events and trends by thousands of climate scientists the world over. To deny the facts is irresponsible at best and – I think many young people might say – almost unforgiveable. I say young people, because my wife was also reflecting the thoughts of a growing number of youths who, alarmed by such dire prognostications, are having trouble seeing much of a future for themselves let alone their children. Many feel it might be morally and ethically irresponsible to even have children. Whirlwind 29-year-old U.S. Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is pressing for a Green New Deal to help fight climate change, broached the topic recently on Instagram. “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question – is it okay to still have children?” Many youths are angry and feel that adults and the governments they elected are letting them down by failing to take the kind of action needed to avoid climate “Armageddon” in their lifetimes. They feel their lives are being disregarded, even stolen. Some psychologists talk about the debilitating emotional effect that global warming is having on young people. Many youths, they say, feel scared and paralyzed and think there’s nothing they can do. They feel like the world as we know it is going to end and that the planet’s living creatures are going to die. “I once spoke to a young child and asked him why he was protesting [climate change], said Aliénor Rougeot, a second-year student at the University of Toronto, in an interview in a March 13, Canada’s National Observer. “He looked at me and said, ‘I want a future.’ In my head it was a ‘duh’ moment, but why don’t our governments get it?” To their credit, an increasing number of young people are rising through the anxiety and torpor by organizing protests. “We really can’t dream about the future without first addressing the climate crisis,” said grade 11 student and global warming activist Rebecca Hamilton, in the same above-mentioned interview. And that, she said, means making our concerns known, and loudly. Also in the same interview, 12-year-old Roy Batemen said he knows what he’d say if he met Ontario Premier Doug Ford, widely thought to being blind to human-caused climate change. “I would ask him why he’s not taking climate action seriously … if he replies with ‘economy’ as the reason, I’d ask if he was thinking short-term or long-term. Because I think his answer would be short-term.” “[Ford] just doesn’t get it,” Batemen added. “There are no jobs on a dead planet.” Batemen and Hamilton were among thousands of Canadian school children who staged a strike outside the Ontario Legislature on March 15 calling for global action on climate change. It was the largest such gathering of young people in Canada’s history. They joined tens of thousands of their peers in more than 100 countries, a coordinated effort inspired and led by the internationally-acclaimed 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg. For her astonishing courage and leadership, Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here on our farm, my wife and I are committed to helping mitigate global warming by conserving and enhancing biodiversity, imple-menting strategies to sequester more carbon, and limiting our CO2 emissions. We can do more. If people everywhere made similar efforts, as they are able, it could make a significant difference. But more, much more than actions by individuals like us is needed. Governments like that of Doug Ford’s need to bear down and take global warming seriously, before it’s too late. I’m hopeful, but sorry to say, not optimistic about that happening. If on the climate change front my spirit is buoyed by anything these days, it’s by efforts like those of the school children amassed outside the Ontario Legislature on March 15, who chanted: “We are unstoppable! Another world is possible! There is no planet B.” ◊