As a young person I am told a lot that I am lucky.
Lucky to have a job in a difficult-to-enter industry; lucky to understand the significance of social media; lucky enough to be able to fly freely and travel to neighbouring countries; lucky to live in Scotland, where it issues like climate change are taken seriously by one of the first governments to declare it ‘an emergency’.
I am a lucky person. I was lucky enough to be there on Friday, when Glasgow’s climate strikers made it abundantly clear the city’s youth is ready to be heard loud and proud.
The 10,000-plus finally had a platform to deliver the message – “we want change and we want it now”.
This voice is lost in the voting booth. In referenda, you can only vote if you are 16, instantly ruling out Erin Curtis, the 15-year-old Glaswegian activist instrumental in the organisation of the march.
And with a voting age of 18: how many marchers would actually be able to vote for any change before 2030?
Our luck, it seems, runs out when I consider that by 2030, when all being well I’ll still be here to vote, it will be too late to limit warming to 1.5 degrees if we don’t change our ways.
Was I simply born in the wrong decade, in the one where we started to
realise the consequences of that lucky air-travel?
And was it just unfortunate that it was young people, like me, who realised the gravity of this change, and then had to group together in our thousands to sound loud enough to be heard?
The thing about being ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’ is that it removes responsibility or control – results are just consequences of fate and coincidence, rather than actions.
Read More: Thousands to gather in Glasgow for youth climate strike
Action on climate change does not fall in that bracket.
Roseanna Cunningham MSP, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, wrote in the nation’s response to the Global Climate Emergency that “We all have a part to play: individuals, communities, businesses, other organisations. And opposition parties also have a responsibility to look at their own approaches.”
Ears of those in power are pricking – they hear us, but are they listening?
Our sister title The Herald reported a poll that showed that, in Glasgow, 80 per cent of people think climate change is “more important” than Brexit, but 60 per cent of us have no confidence in the government’s willingness to actually tackle climate change.
Even the Big Yin, Billy Connolly, told me that climate change should take more precedence than ‘boring Brexit’ in our minds.
In this revolution, young people are taking matters in to their own hands. Teenage activists, such as Greta Thunberg and Erin, suddenly have the loudest voices, not our politicians.
The world is heating up, putting life at risk. There is no grey area: we need to lower our carbon emissions or we will die. To do that, we have to eat less meat; take less flights and travel, when possible, by train or boat. It shouldn’t be hard – and yet, it is.
Of course it is: here lies the rub. My ‘lucky’ young generation is one that can learn to drive as soon as they are able, which in some cases is before we can vote. We can afford to fly budget airlines for quick holidays, bulk buy cheap chicken.
Our unwitting abuse of carbon emissions have become natural, effortless, easy.
We become conditioned by the new ‘normal’ – a coffee a day in a single-use cup, a quick flight to somewhere sunny; driving lessons for your 18th birthday.
The result is that what is ‘natural’ appealing is actually killing nature.
I used to think: what harm does my one single-use cup really have on the environment? But 10,000 single use cups – that makes all the difference.
On Friday, I was able to watch what difference one person among many could make.
All these young people, brought together by the things which so many believe keep us apart – by social media and smartphones.
Read more: Glasgow's Greta Thunberg: The climate crisis is a fight we can’t afford to lose
During the march it became resoundingly clear that age, and luck, no longer matter – there are no limits to what you can achieve with determination and belief.
Both Greta and Erin have made huge, instrumental changes without stepping a foot inside a voting booth: Greta is currently travelling the globe by boat, holding to account members of UN Congress in the same way that Erin held to account the five prime ministerial candidates’ on live television.
What matters now is action and bravery. Older generations should remember that revolutions are boring when you just watch.
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