FOR A SOCIETY already divided along race, class, and gender lines, the emerging divisions between young and old may become another crucial fracture—one that could sap our ability to make change. Or, if we understood it just a little differently, that fracture could heal in a way that strengthened our society.
You can see this division on many fronts. As the enormous and lucky Boomer generation has moved through our society, it has done a good deal of grabbing: Grabbing of money, as Boomers who grew up in an era of rising wages and cheap houses consolidated a relatively strong financial position. (You may not feel rich, but if you’re secure that looks awfully nice to Millennials struggling with college debt and living four to a sublet.) Grabbing of attention: For decades every company catered to the buying power of the generation, and even now its politicians are reluctant to surrender the stage.
It would be one thing if we Boomers had used the strong economic decades of our early lives to help make society stronger and more resilient. There’s much to be proud of: the civil rights and women’s movements, for instance. But on the whole, we’ll be the first generation to leave the world a worse place than we found it. Climate change, of course, is the perfect example: We’ve literally filled the atmosphere with so much carbon that we’re changing the operation of the planet. California has turned from golden idyll into smoke-choked danger zone; we’ve raised the oceans and melted the glaciers.
And—as practically every poll indicates—we’re the generation least likely to care about it all, the most likely to vote for those who maintain the impossible status quo. That “funny” sticker on the back of all those RVs? The one that says, “I’m spending my kids’ inheritance”? Truer words were never stuck to chrome.
BUT THAT’S NOT everyone. I’ve been heartened to see what a chord, say, Greta Thunberg struck with lots of people of all ages when she launched her school strikes in Europe. I’ve been thrilled to watch lots of older people get excited by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Green New Deal. I think people are realizing that their generation may have dropped the ball, but that it’s still possible for us to use our remaining strength, money, skills, and passion in the job of backing up our juniors.
For Christians, this seems especially easy. We’re conditioned to the idea that change might come from the young: “And a child shall lead them,” we recall each Christmas Eve, as we pay homage to a man who died before he would have been old enough to, say, run for president in the U.S. As with following Jesus, following people younger than we are requires submerging one’s ego a little. Not dropping one’s critical faculties: Following blindly is almost as dumb as leading blindly. But dropping one’s sense that one should always be in charge.
It can be fun, too. I helped start 350.org, which became the first big planet-wide climate campaign. I was nearing 50, but all my co-conspirators were still in college. I’m still twice the age of almost everyone on the staff. Sometimes that’s hard (on them too, especially when they’re trying to get me to use some new piece of technology). Mostly it feels right. Reaching across divides is always a good idea, and this one is easier than most, since we were all young once and since we’re all, if we’re lucky, going to get old.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, is the author most recently of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
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