‘How dare you?’ snarled teenage Greta Thunberg to the world at large when she spoke at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York last year and proceeded to castigate present generations for failing to protect and safeguard a safe and eco-friendly future for people of her generation; for allowing climate change to go beyond easy repair; for sitting on our duffs while whole eco-systems disappeared and vulnerable species became threatened with mass extinction.
Greta has a point. However she overlooks the fact that all these dire consequences and calamities in progress started earlier than the generation of the Baby Boomers, which is now practically the oldest living generation at whose feet she can lay blame. Perhaps it’s a moot point and she has a right to throw it in our faces as the Boomers as a collective entity became the ‘force majeure’ that failed to stop the inevitable downward spiral of our current ecological condition. Individually we experienced the beginnings of an emerging awareness in the 1970s when the Age of Aquarius dawned. That’s why some of us created a few bandwagons like the Green Movement, the Harmony and Understanding Communes, the organic farming collectives, etc.
We were so busy liberating ourselves from the constraints of the 50s and 60s ‘old’ morality and mentality and so caught up in trying to create a new, i.e. more spiritual, world paradigm alongside our technological accomplishments that we lost sight of the lurking dangers to our eco-systems. As the years passed and we grew up and moved into the next phases of our mature lives, we had a chance to vote into power those that could have made a difference. Alas, politics being what they are and combined with individual greed for power and wealth – and collective apathy – it seems to be always a matter of compromise, accommodation, negotiation, concession, finding middle ground and conceding to lesser goals. So the good, the green and the social causes frequently had to go to the wall and cede the way to politically appeasing issues for the electorate. The pocketbook of the constituent is a mighty influencer and the causes benefitting nature, the environment and the social good are always more expensive and tend to get shunted to the advantage of lower taxes, the mirage of universal employment and continued industrial and technological progress.
We still see plenty of that in action all over the world. And we should not be proud that our laissez faire-laissez aller attitudes led us to these dire results. Yes, Greta, we hear you. And we admire your spunk and audacity even as we think you’re a bit over the top when you accuse us of stealing your childhood. We also hear the very veiled but implicit criticism that we do not deserve to survive because of what we, collectively, have done to your home planet. It is indeed cringe worthy. Even more so when we contemplate what we leave behind for our children and future generations.
Does Humanity Deserve to Survive? Whether our home planet can be saved is one of the salient questions. Piggybacking on that is the question whether humanity deserves to survive. That implies the idea that, if we do not deserve to survive as a human race, we automatically assume that our children and other future generations will continue our business as usual mentality and are therefore also not worthy to survive. That’s grossly unfair to Greta and other likeminded waifs. But we need to let this young generation show their mettle and give them a chance to step in where we left off. Yes, it’s getting us off the hook in a way but blaming us falls short of letting us help with solutions.
I am reminded of my old boss whose favourite saying was ‘Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.’ Boomers, Millennials, Gen-Xrs and whatever other denominals still to come, can work collectively to formulate solutions and enact them. Some may be simple, others farfetched but one thing stares us in the face: it is past midnight and the glass shoe has shattered because not one solution will fit all. What we’re doing and not doing will determine how and if we survive.
Paying for the future. Since governments are always notoriously short of money because they’re spending it in all the wrong places, we need to look in another direction to augment the financial wherewithal to finance big projects like combating climate change, preserving the world’s natural forests, cleaning up our oceans and planet. Governments will always claim they are short of money for these ambitious projects, but the world’s billionaires aren’t. They have so much money they and their heirs can never spend it all. ‘Billions and billions of stars’ said the late Carl Sagan, ‘so many we can never explore them all’. That’s how you can view the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires.
Emulating Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, other altruistic Midases are already funding projects to benefit humanity with mega bucks. Ben Delo, a British mathematician and founder of the crypto currency trading company BitMEX has pledged to give over half of his fortune away to ‘fund work to safeguard future generations and protect the long-term prospects of humanity including mitigating risks that could spell the end of humanity or permanently curtail our potential’. Delo’s focus is rather unique as he is concentrating his largesse on projects that will benefit future generations rather than the ones alive now because he believes too few people are looking out for the interests of future generations. Mr. Delo’s generosity is targeting projects and organizations that are actively involved in improving life on Earth for the children of the future, the billions of people yet to be born; to ensure the human race is still around in 100, 500, even 10,000 years. Barring any rogue government stupidity or terrorist act resulting in whole scale annihilation of the planet, Earth could remain habitable for 600 to 800 million years more so there could be about 7 million future generations to care for.
Ben Delo thinks that the youngest generation feels disenfranchised even though a vast and exciting future lies ahead for them if they can navigate the challenges and opportunities posed by new technologies in the upcoming century. ‘In order to safeguard that extraordinary future for our descendants’, he says, ‘we must act now because we are at a critical moment to do so. We’ve never been in this position before: with the power to destroy the future, but not necessarily the wisdom to wield that power responsibly.’
In order for our current civilisation to survive, says Delo, we need to plan beyond our own lifetimes, we need to work together and take action to reduce the risk from specific dangers and catastrophic global threats like natural pandemics or activities that can cause or accelerate human extinction, nuclear war, extreme climate change, synthetic biology (think biological weapons) or preparing for dangers that don’t yet exist such as metamorphic AI and its big risks of potential misuse.
Humanity is facing far too many risks in this turbulent and transformative period in our history. Now is the time to start to mitigate them and think about the long-term challenges we face as a species and think about the long term future of the world. Putting his money where his mouth is, Delo so far has funded research into the prevention of nuclear wars and pandemic diseases as well as academic research into shaping the very long-term future.
A lot can be done to protect future generations from the stupidity of our generation’s actions but it is high time to get on with it and for all living generations to work together to create some realistic and far reaching consequences. If we cannot get official governments to take decisive action, we need to look to the billionaire philanthropists to step up to the plate. There is no consensus on when or if the Age of Aquarius has made its debut but all agree that its length will be around 2,160 years. If we want to experience some of that we do need to turn the cart around now.
Greta, go meet Mr. Delo.
By Ines Wynn
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