In a speech to students in apartheid South Africa, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy declared, “this world demands the qualities of youth.” As I walked around the Boston Climate Strike last week, I heard those words over and over in my head. I heard those words and thought of the audacity of Greta Thunberg, fed up with adults doing nothing on climate change and choosing to do the opposite. A single teenager on strike, became 6 million people marching across the world. Six million of the “tiny ripples of hope” Kennedy would refer to later in the same speech.
Walking around Government Center Plaza, I was struck by the mood of the predominantly youthful strikers: hopeful. Joyful. Energetic. It is easy to read the science around climate change, study the politics around climate change, read the history of efforts to tackle climate change and come away despondent. They did the exact opposite. Why?
There are strategic reasons - the public responds to a hopeful message. It is easier to attract supporters and win allies with an optimistic message. It is easier to lose energy and supporters with doomsday constantly on your tongue. But I do not believe it was any of those. I believe the strikers are hopeful and joyful and energetic, because they have realized they cannot wait for any one elected official or party or anything else to solve the climate crisis. It is up to them. That is exciting. It is reason for hope, for joy, for optimism.
Citizen might be the most important title in a democracy, but organized citizens are the most powerful. Organized citizens have led nearly all of the major Presidential candidates to take a No Fossil Fuel Campaign Contribution Pledge, to back a Climate Change debate and participate in climate change forums. They have driven the only party that accepts the science of climate change, to propose bold, ambitious plans to solve the crisis. They have sat in, spoken up and been heard. They turned a one student climate strike, into a global movement.
Speaking of the qualities of youth, Kennedy went on to describe them as, “a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.” Only a young person could look at the mess we are in now - the climate crisis, rising economic inequality, families separated at the border & children in cages, gun violence unabated - and not only see the way forward, but smile working to get us all there. It will take courage and an appetite for adventure. It will take an imagination to see beyond the turbulence of today, to a brighter tomorrow.
It took young people, like John Lewis, to drive the Civil Rights Movement. It took young people to end apartheid in South Africa. Young people who were the targets to speak up after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. For so many pivotal times in our country's history, it has taken the “qualities of youth” to help drive necessary changes to make our country better than it was the day or the decade before. Yes, we should applaud the actions of the energized, joyful and hopeful young people around the world, but we should also hope that our current political leaders have enough imagination, courage and adventure to listen to them too.
Ben Downing represented the westernmost district in the Massachusetts Senate from 2006 to 2016. He is currently a vice president at Nexamp, a Massachusetts-based solar energy company, and an adjunct faculty member at Tufts University.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.