Generational and cultural change are contributing to environmental sustainability
We continue to live in a world of rapid technological change, constantly triggering economic and cultural transformation. New technologies are steadily changing the way we live. We are starting to see this with artificial intelligence, the world has been revolutionized by the internet. at 20day A century on, we might now think of more prosaic inventions like the refrigerator, air conditioner, and the motor vehicle as changing how we eat, where we live, and where we work. The positive impact of technology is evident and integrated into our way of life. Negative effects are often the object of denial; cigarettes and cancer, fossil fuels and climate change, air travel and COVID-19. 1 billion people smoke and 7 million people died from smoking last year. The extreme weather caused by global warming predicted by turn-of-the-century climate models has arrived. While the COVID-19 pandemic has receded, the health impact has been enormous, and we are still experiencing the economic and psychological impact of the pandemic.These elements of our changing world are not considered Change By young people, but just as the way the world works. This is the world they’ve always known. Many of them are fearful and even depressed about the world they have inherited, but these fearful attitudes are the cornerstone of the idea that it might be possible to save the planet from total degradation.
My view of the way the world works is different from that of young people because I have worked in environmental policy and politics since the fall of 1975, when I was at SUNY/Buffalo in a lecture led by the late Professor Lester Mill Professor Lester Milbrath’s transformative graduate environmental policy seminar. At the time, little attention was paid to the environment as a policy issue. The EPA is 5 years old; Earth Day is a new “holiday” and for most people the environment is a fringe and relatively unimportant issue. Nearly half a century later, it has become a central issue of our time. We see signs of its importance everywhere. We’re also seeing signs of a shift in environmental attitudes across generations in polling data.For example, according to a recent web post Alec Tyson, Cary Funk and Brian Kennedy, Pew Research Center:
“While there is general public reluctance to completely phase out fossil fuels, younger people are more open to the idea. Among Americans aged 18 to 29, 50 percent say the U.S. should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels, while about as many of people (48%) say the U.S. should use only renewable energy sources. There are also age differences within the two political parties. Among Democrats and those who lean Democratic, a majority between the ages of 18 and 29 ( 62%) favor a complete phase-out of fossil fuels, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats age 50 and over. Republicans of all ages support the continued use of a mix of energy sources, including oil, coal and natural gas.However, about one in five (22%) of Republicans ages 18 to 29 say the U.S. should phase out fossil fuels entirely, compared with the same percentage among Republicans ages 50 and older. Less than a tenth.”
When young people go to school or work, they are pushing the institutions they participate in to reduce their impact on the planet’s ecosystems. Investors have made similar demands and are starting to demand data from companies about their environmental footprints and potential risks. This marks a new level of awareness of threats to environmental sustainability. It doesn’t come from an ideological source, but from a changed perception of how the world works. This new and increasingly dominant societal paradigm is based on shared experiences—especially the growing local impact of extreme weather events. Young people find their lives disrupted by floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes and power outages; few survive or manage to escape the effects of these events, and most link extreme weather events to climate change.
The Earth today has a population of over 8 billion; the world I grew up in has less than half that population. While America has made progress in cleaning up our environment, some other parts of the world have not, and other countries have made greater progress than we have. The increase in global travel before and after the pandemic has exposed this generation to environmental degradation and extreme poverty. It also provides first-hand accounts of cities innovating to improve environmental quality, NGOs working to lift people out of poverty, and businesses internalizing values of environmental conservation, transparent governance, and paying more attention to them Impact on home communities.
In the United States, distrust of large and powerful institutions such as government, large corporations, and universities fuels widespread skepticism about the ability of these institutions to serve their stakeholders. In some cases, this has led college and professional school graduates to start their own private for-profit or nonprofit organizations. If recent graduates decide to seek and accept jobs in established organizations, they may push those organizations to demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and environmental sustainability. In a modern brain-based economy, these institutions often respond to these needs to retain and develop talented employees. Although management hierarchies exist in all organizations, effective management often requires senior management to provide a venue for employee engagement and to ensure that organizational communication is not purely top-down. Ironically, while politics has become increasingly polarized, nonprofits and for-profits have found themselves increasingly receptive to employee dialogue and consensus-building efforts.
While the Biden administration and some state and local governments are actively taking action to stimulate the transition to environmental sustainability, many governments are resisting these transformative efforts. Despite these political dynamics, private companies are internalizing EGS values and practices, driven by investors, employees, and customers. This has led to efforts to conduct life cycle analysis of production and consumption processes to minimize environmental impact. It also includes practices that ensure that human resources and management decisions encourage diversity among employees and managers. Right-wing ideologues in politics and the media have tried to label some companies as “awakened,” and these organizational change agents have largely ignored these efforts. They are ignored because the cultural trends of more tolerance are far stronger than the political drivers of intolerance. Just as people understand the link between extreme weather and climate change because they are experiencing the effects of it, young people have friends from all over the world, who are ethnically diverse, with different sexual orientations or changing gender identities. They are experiencing the world and find it easy to resist myths and efforts to demonize difference. They are not threatened by diversity because they have experienced it and see it as the norm.
I am not blind to the forces of intolerance and hatred. I recognize the extent to which extremist voices in politics and the media feed these forces. This scares me because it’s similar to the rise of fascism. The Holocaust has never been far from my thought process. Hitler’s example was recent enough that some of us knew some of his victims, and it’s an example we should never forget. Still, I believe the size of our tolerant population is far greater than the size of the die-hard hate purveyors. As far as environmental protection is concerned, we are seeing an additional boost from wellness culture trends and health concerns. All the exercise and healthy eating in the world won’t protect you if the environment is toxic. People living in Cancer Alley, Louisiana, and East Palestine, Ohio may be of different races and have different political ideologies, but they all share a common fear of being poisoned by toxic chemicals. They know they have been poisoned by mismanaged, greedy corporations. Political ideologies are no match for shared experiences. This is the impact young people bring to the transition to environmental sustainability. They see the crowded and endangered planet they are inheriting, and it drives them to work hard to preserve it.
