Generational Genocide (1)

Foreword

Heating the planet kills people. The more time advances, the worse it gets. The worse it gets, the more people will die.

Planetary heating is not an accident. It hasn’t happened by itself. The terms global warming, global heating or climate change do not make it obvious that the physical phenomenon is actually a consequence of deliberate actions.

We have two separate processes taking place: the actions and the results. The planet is heating up – that’s the global heating – and then there are the acts of heating the planet. There are no words to describe these actions as a whole, and thus we have lacked tools for thinking about them as a specific phenomenon.

Current overheating is maintained by the older generation, while those who will suffer are mostly the younger people. Changing the climate is an act of generational violence.

 Suppose the current plan of the older generation is fulfilled; as decades advance, hundreds of millions if not billions of people will die. Every young person, in one way or another, will suffer. 

 We call the act of heating the planet a generational genocide.

The Older Generation is Responsible and Guilty

We believe it is appropriate to prosecute in the International Criminal Court certain key players of the older generations, as, for example, the Global Climate Crimes Project is rightly pursuing. But it is also correct that in Finland, as in every similar country with high economic development, the older generation as a group is responsible and guilty for the looming destruction of the younger generation.  

 For us as young people of the Global North, the uncomfortable truth is that the older generation has, by planning and designing how our societies work, forced us also to partake in and contribute to our generation's destruction.

Not all of the victims of heating the planet are of the younger generation, but younger people and our descendants will be the vast majority of the victims. Likewise, not all of the older people in the world share similar responsibility for this, but all of those most responsible are of the older generation. 

Generational genocide is an inseparable part and an end result of the seemingly normal functioning of our societies, that is, the planet-heating activities and non-activities of ordinary people in their everyday lives. 

Because practically every older person in any economically developed society partakes in some or all of the following activities, each older person in these societies is individually responsible for and guilty of committing the generational genocide. 

Operating the generational genocide by personally producing greenhouse gas emissions.

Funding it by consuming, investing in and supporting (via taxes to government that subsidize) activities that heat the planet. 

Encouraging it by normalizing and glorifying (in social media and in private conversation) generationally genocidal activities such as aviation, industrial animal agriculture, and motoring.

Remaining silent about it and not denouncing it in order to secure personal mental, social and material interests. 

Other reprehensible actions – such as generationally genocidal lobbying, legislating and advertising – exist. These are, however, limited to a lesser group of people. Persons involved in these activities must be prosecuted. 

 To begin to address the generational genocide, the process of intervention starts from the last aspect (remaining silent) and proceeds from the bottom to the top respectively. 

 Silence, and thereby extensive denial, is the key tool for maintaining any form of conduct the continuation of which is dependent on shared and normalized ignorance.

 Generational genocide, expectedly, would not continue for long if the youth had shared knowledge of it being perpetrated against them. Once, and only once, the young people understand this violence and its intentional nature can they potentially gain the power to stop it. 

Silence on this matter serves the psychological and social interests of the older people. It is in their interests to not have to face the anger, disillusionment and despair of their younger ones, not to mention the socially awkward situations that would follow from speaking about the generational genocide to their older peers. 

However, breaking the silence and telling the truth is absolutely inevitable – and imperative – if we want to stop the generational genocide from taking place. 

 The Younger Generation is Under Attack

 Young people all have very different risks and exposures in global heating. Many have already died. But it is also true that all of the young people are on the suffering side of the same attack. It is obvious that the interests and safety of all of us are being neglected.

The moral, political and parenting neglect of the older generation is what makes all of the young people of the world share the same enemy: the interests and indifference of the older generation. 

Think about it. Even our parents say the current heating of the planet is a wrong against “our children and grandchildren” – while themselves carrying on exactly the same as always. It is not that they wouldn’t know what is going to happen – but that they don’t think it’s going to happen to them. 

Young people’s interests are also being neglected systematically on the political level. Our interests are not considered politically relevant; because many of the young cannot vote, we are not seen as political subjects. Hence political parties have no votes to win in advancing the causes of real relevance for the young people, especially if and as that cause would be in conflict with the interests of the older generation, which is a huge politically eligible interest group.

It all comes down to the question of whose needs, hopes and concerns in our societies are considered relevant, or to even exist.

It All Starts with Breaking the Silence

 In our world dominated and run by older people it is necessary to question and transform the established language and terms by which we understand what the planetary heating is about. Every framing of the current situation has the power to either conceal or reveal the generational power structures and violence that are at the core of the planetary heating.

 GCCP’s efforts in taking climate criminals to the International Criminal Court are of extreme importance. Having top-level powerholders investigated, and hopefully prosecuted and sentenced, is an essential step in demonstrating to the public the fact that planetary heating is intentional and murderous annihilation of innocent people.

Young people have had very little time and resources to change the manner in which the everyday functions of life are organized. We do not hold institutional positions, and we do not have capital, or our own police or military forces. What we do have, however, is the freedom and capacity to think. And the power of truth is now on our side.

Helping younger generation realize their situation, while making older generation think and feel of their lifestyles and moral behaviour for what they are – repulsive – is now the necessary way forward.

It all starts with breaking the silence and speaking the truth. And that means speaking these words: Heating the planet is a generational genocide.

 See Part 2 for a continuing analysis of Generational Genocide.