The Generational Divide Opens Wider In The US On Climate Policy
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While polling shows a clear majority of Americans accept that the climate is changing and want the federal government to respond to the myriad threats this poses, the issue has been polarized in the US to extremes not seen in other leading democracies.
An ideological aversion among Republicans to accept climate science and act against fossil fuel interests has led to two starkly different visions laid out by the 2020 presidential candidates. While Trump has rolled back dozens of pollution regulations, dismissed and sidelined climate science and pulled the US from the Paris climate accords, Joe Biden is pushing a $2tn plan to create a 100% clean energy grid within 15 years, and has called the climate crisis “an existential threat” to the US.
But a generational divide is also opening up, with younger people – even young conservatives – increasingly alarmed over the impact of global heating. An overwhelming 80% of voters aged between 18 and 29 consider the climate crisis “a major threat to life on Earth”, according to a poll taken earlier this year. Levels of concern among older people, particularly Republican voters, lag significantly. “I can see a really clear generational split,” says Lily Jarosz, a 17-year-old who lives near Pittsburgh. Jarosz says her parents are “apolitical Gen X-ers” while her grandmother is openly hostile when she raises the subject of climate change. “She’s said to me multiple times ‘why does it matter?’ That hurts me so much, like she doesn’t care about me or understand the immediacy of the issue,” says Jarosz.
“Climate change is visceral for young people,” says Kathryn Stevenson, an academic at NC State University who has studied how educating children on climate change raises the level of concern among their parents. “They can see this coming down on them in their future.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/02/climate-crisis-differences-old-and-young-families