This article is written by Bridget McKenzie, Founding Director, Climate Museum UK

It’s often said young people’s views should be considered when discussing climate action.

More than this, I believe that the existential threat to future generations should drive all decision-making, and so young people should be involved in genuine ways and empowered to contribute to system change to sustain life on the planet.

As the climate becomes more volatile, young people everywhere are feeling that their future is being stolen from them. In the UK, young people are struggling with austerity and Brexit uncertainties against the background of the climate emergency. On a global scale, young people are increasingly affected by resource insecurity and displacement from natural disasters. Young activists from the UK and affected communities raise their voices every day against unjust policies and actions, but they do not feel their concerns are prioritised.

There is a growing need for policymakers and public servants to approach climate action in a global, holistic and justice-focused way. And in this, it is critical to hear the views of young people whether they are directly affected or are activists, or just generally concerned or even unaware in relation to the crisis.

This requires creating platforms and interventions that enable young people to express their views freely, to work with adult experts to solve problems, and to develop skills appropriate for a challenging future. The cultural and educational sectors play a key role in prefiguring and testing this approach.

Introducing the climate museum

Climate Museum UK is a new mobile museum creatively stirring and collecting responses to the climate and ecological emergency. We produce and collect creative activities, artworks and books, then use these in workshops and pop-ups. In workshops, we help professionals to explore complex issues in creative and relevant ways. Through pop-up installations, we help publics, such as families or youth groups, to learn, create and take action.

As a collector of responses to the emergency, we don’t just collect objects but also opinions and creative expressions. For example, in this survey we’re collecting people’s Climate Emotions. This will tell us if different age groups have different emotional responses, and over time will allow us to track changing feelings as the emergency unfolds. This knowledge will also inform how we help people understand and apply Climate Coping Strategies.

The challenge is enormous. Months of fires in Australia have put twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the whole nation’s annual emissions

We were invited to run a session at the recent One Green Gov event in London. OGG is a global community of public servants and public sector allies who are concerned about the climate crisis. We decided it was really important to present a collection of youth voices, and for the younger members of our team to present. We invited the audience to consider how young people feel about the climate emergency, showing a short film by Seamus Coyne-Bailey, a young creative person interviewing his peers.

We then raised the pressing question of how justice can be sustained for those young people into adulthood and for future generations.

What we owe the next generation

The futurist Alex Steffen accuses the fossil fuel lobby of "predatory delay", stealing from future generations to delay climate action for their own short-term profit.

He promotes the “idea that people who do not yet exist have the right to assert their needs in our lives”. To hear these needs, we have to use our imagination and moral compass, and also listen to young people advocating for viable futures for themselves and their unborn children. For example, public servants should support the many groups of children suing companies and governments for knowingly pursuing climate-changing policies which are limiting their futures. And this means actively standing with them in stopping the policies that limit their futures.

One could say that we’re not so much in the Anthropocene — an age where humans alter the earth — as the Pyrocene — the Age of Fire

This goes beyond duty within one’s job, to be a duty of humanity. The work of the speaker and writer Mac Macartney is inspired by the idea of the "Children’s Fire", fires lit by First Nation’s people that reminded them to base all decisions around the welfare of unborn children, not just of humans but of all species. Macartney explains: “This is a pledge to life, a commitment to the responsibility carried by each successive generation to safeguard the vitality and regenerative capacity of the earth.”

The challenge is enormous. Months of fires in Australia have put twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the whole nation’s annual emissions. One could say that we’re not so much in the Anthropocene — an age where humans alter the earth — as the Pyrocene — the Age of Fire.

To effect any justice for future generations, there is not much to be achieved by small interventions into the "business as usual" economic system, for example, slowly adding green energy to the mix over three decades. Even a complete global decarbonisation would not be able to "stop climate change" within lifetimes of anybody alive today, and it will continue to worsen.

Watching the clock or changing the world

In our workshop at One Green Gov, a civil servant said it was key for ministers and senior figures to feel empathy, and to really understand that young people need an active response.

A young participant who is a climate activist made a strong appeal that these influential people must understand how it feels going through education and deciding on your career path while hearing that “there are only 10 years left”.

Her message is that we are at zero hour, that there is a major disconnect between the education system and the kinds of capacities that young people will need as the climate crisis hits.

In all systems that engage with young people, such as education, health or the youth justice system, it is vital to empower in a way that balances providing necessary support

In all systems that engage with young people, such as education, health or the youth justice system, it is vital to empower in a way that balances providing necessary support. It’s trendy to talk about "listening hard" to young people’s concerns, but not so common to see that structures actually changing to give them agency, to involve them in changing systems, and to support them in activism to stop harm. People feel the most wellbeing when they can be involved in "prefigurative activism", when they imagine and try out ways of living that prefigure a more thrivable and just future.

However, small isolated experiments will not change systems effectively enough to tackle climate change. They must be scaled up and invested in, and some hope for this lies in local authorities that have declared a climate emergency and so might take a more regenerative approach to place-making.

Intergenerational justice requires that people of all ages can be active system-changing citizens. Where better to look than the inspiration of young people modelling this already, such as Clover Hogan’s project Force of Nature, a launchpad for young people to realise their potential by taking on the planet's messiest problems. We call on all public and civic workers to be inspired by this, to hear young people’s feelings but then to do all possible to empower them to change the world. — Bridget McKenzie

(Picture Credit: Pexels)