Theirs is the world and everything that is in it
When a decision with earth-shattering ramifications is taken, who is it that has the most to lose?
The poor? The rich? The old? The young? The swift and agile with liquid assets? The implanted with illiquid assets?
When Ukraine was invaded by Russia this year, at least 7 million Ukrainians out of a population of some 40 million or so were displaced. They went abroad, or to safer places within Ukraine. Many of them were younger adults, with their children. Those who remained behind were the older generations. Those who had worked their entire lives for what they had – their homes, their TV sets, their fridges and their washing machines. When Russian troops came to their home towns, they killed many of these older people, destroyed their homes, their livelihoods and stole their domestic appliances. Now, in some parts of Ukraine, rebuilding is beginning. It is the young people of Ukraine who are returning to war zones to rebuild the lives of those who stood defiant in the face of the aggression. They bring with them their rave music and their youthfulness, their energy and their will. And their hatred of Russia. What Russia planted in Ukraine were not seeds of wheat but seeds of hatred. It erected a wall of defiance against itself stronger and higher than the wall that Donald Trump erected against Mexico. It’s a wall that the older generation of Ukraine will never dismantle; whether the young people of Ukraine will dismantle it is in grave doubt. Russia and Ukraine are now more separate than they ever were in all the years following the Soviet Union’s break-up. Perhaps because it is the young who have most to lose from Russia’s invasion. They’ve lost their educations, they’ve lost their youths; they’ve lost time. And time is a great loss when a decision with earth-shattering ramifications is taken.
And it is the young who will lose out on failures by world governments to gain a grasp on climate change. This year, Pakistan was flooded to the extent of two thirds. It’s a disaster unquestionably contributed to by climate change. It has devastated the nation, across the board, from young to old. Yet, at Cop26, its neighbour objected to a proposal that would have “phased out” coal; instead India wanted only to “phase coal down”. Coal is a major contributor to carbon dioxide pollution. But India, and China along with it, is reluctant to phase out its production, whereas experts say it must remain in the ground if we are to have a chance of achieving the 1.5° limit to the global temperature increase in due time. The third world rightly points the finger at the developed west for having put the third world in this unenviable crisis; yet some parts of the third world are insistent on exploiting their own resources such as would worsen the crisis. Perhaps the first world needs to compensate the third world for deciding to keep resources underground, but, having determined those resources are there and having the means and knowledge to extract them, how likely is it really that they will remain there? If it is only a matter of time until the climate crisis bites at mankind, instead of the gnawing it is currently doing, who is it that has the most to lose when these decisions with earth-shattering ramifications are taken? Clearly, the young. For if time is thereby lost, it is the young who have the most time to lose of any of us.
When the free university education of the sixties and seventies gave way to the widening wealth gap of today and, against a background of stagnating wages, financial premiums are placed on the education that was once as of right, who has most to lose on these decisions with their earth-shattering ramifications? Again, the young.
When the cost of a home soars beyond the reach of people, leaving them with the prospect of remaining in the precarious market of rented property for their entire lives, even when the jobs they do are the jobs that, half a century previously, would have still left home ownership a feasible option, who has most to lose from the decisions that bring about such earth-shattering ramifications? The young, of course.
For the young, tomorrow is a dark day. Nowhere does hope spring with greater joy than in the hearts of the young, and nowhere is hope so dampened for humanity than in the hearts of the young. We call the young “our hope and joy”. We must give them something to be joyous about; something to hope for. If ours is the world, and everything that is in it, tomorrow it will be theirs. The old will be long gone when the gnawing doubts give way to an almighty bite.