Right now, stressed-out students are studying for their final exams, planning for their futures. Parents are anxiously watching to see their children make their way into an uncertain world. Young people have always had some degree of control over their futures. While some circumstances are almost impossible to change, there are always choices to be made; decisions made today that will define the course of a life decades on.
Over the past week, 37,432 young Australians aged 12-29 cast their ballot in Youth Decide, the world’s first national youth climate vote. The idea was simple: give the generation most affected by current decisions on climate solutions the chance to choose the kind of world they want to inherit.
Young people were presented with three options of future worlds, based on the government’s own Garnaut Review as well as the UN IPCC reports, and modelling from the Stern Review. The campaign was organised by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and World Vision Australia, with support from Monash University, VISY and a coalition of youth organisations and corporates with the goal of protecting the world’s young people in Australia and developing countries from the effects of runaway climate change.
The results came in last night, and they’re startling — a whopping 97.48% of young people who voted supported targets stronger than the government’s existing commitments. Only 940 people (2.51%) supported the government’s current emission reduction target.
• 91.5% (34267) voted for cuts of 40% plus by 2020 (over 1990 levels)
• 5.9% (2225) voted for cuts of 25-40% by 2020
• 2.5% (940) voted for cuts of 4-24% by 2020
When presented with the facts about the end points of different climate-change mitigation targets, young people overwhelmingly chose a future that requires much stronger targets than current government policy.
Voters were presented with three choices. Each scenario was based on research conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the international body of the world’s leading climate scientists, as well as modelling commissioned by the Australian and UK Governments. Youth Decide also worked closely with leading Australian Climate Scientists to best summarise each likely scenario for the various emission reduction targets governments are proposing, including Professor David Griggs, CEO of ClimateWorks Australia (CWA), which focuses on action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Previous positions he has held include UK Met Office deputy chief scientist and director of the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, and head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific assessment unit. Griggs is currently the vice-chair of the World Climate Research Program and is a member of the Victorian Ministerial Reference Council on Climate Change Adaptation, the Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors and the Climate Institute Strategic Council.
World 1 (current policy of 4 – 24% targets):
World 2 (25 — 40% targets):
World 3 (40% plus target):
Young Australians have decided not just what world they want to inherit, but also that they want to have a say in decisions that affect their future more than any final exam.
Youth Decide wasn’t just a vote. It was a show of force from an emerging social movement involving tens of thousands of young people. Over the past week, more than 330 local voting events have been held in high schools, universities, TAFEs, libraries, parks and even beaches around Australia, with 15,178 of the votes cast at these local events. A team of 2000 volunteers helped organise these events. Almost 5000 attended a concert in the middle of voting week in Melbourne’s Federation Square with The Cat Empire, Blue King Brown and Kisschasy.
Young people around the world are the human face of climate change — its victims but also its solutions. This generation will take the planet back from the brink; because they’ve decided to do so. We’ve seen in the past that once young people decide it is time, get organised and build a social movement, there’s nothing that can’t be done.
The next generation of voters is here, and they’re moving from simply a demographic, to a political constituency who will act — and vote — on climate change.
I hope you’re right about the level of support amongst youth for 40%+ reductions. But then again I’m 50 and everyone I know, regardless of age, supports deep cuts when the consequences are explained.
The large sections of the mainstream media at the beheast of vested interests are continually mudding the water with half stories and flaky surveys. Go Crikey you good thing.
I want to be optimistic that humankind, collectively, can respond to this potential crisis. But…
Two decades ago at an international conference on economic and ecological sustainability at La Trobe University, I asked what the world would like like if the (then) total GDP of all nations was divided between the world’s population with a maximum disparity in distribution of 2:1.
I got no answer but the question caused much discomfort among delegates from the third world, most apparently from the wealthiest 1% of their nation’s citizens. It seemed that if my hypothetical question was actualised they, too, would enjoy a reduced life style.
All those we now entrust with planning for a future that may be shaped by a rapidly changing climate are in that 1% of world citizens. Deep down, I suspect, they believe that wealth will buy them exemption from change, insulation against the weather, protection from civil disorder.
With Goldman Sach back at the executive bonus trough and the recently retired CEO of Qantas as shining examples of the altruism of the wealthy, I fear humankind cannot put aside self interest, hard enough and long enough, to achieve anything against any environmental change, near imperceptible in the short term, but destructive in the longer term.
Even here in south-eastern Australia we haven’t dealt with the salinity that for generations has been destroying rich agricultural lands before our eyes.
And of course, if climate change is not anthropocentric but terrestrial, then we have a whole other strategies to consider
Is it a time to think triage. What can we save, where, at what cost and for how many?
Now some will say I’m too pessimistic, but only a sober appreciation of the consequences of the wrong diagnosis and the wrong remedies will suffice now.
This study is interesting but flawed in methodology. The alarmist language, especially of worlds one and two easily lead the respondent to world three. What is truly fascinating, however is that anyone voted for the first two options. I suspect that this simply confirms that 8.5% of young Australians aged 12-29 are functionally illiterate.
However, world action on chloro fluro carbons a decade ago, and malaria a decade before, does hold out some hope, but an awfully large number of profligate voters in the democratic developed world are going to have to take a BIG cut in lifestyle, in equity to the second and third world, and in preservation of the first.
A big ask with election every three years and no sign that politicians are less opportunistic than before.
And… PS. World three seems to mark the extinction of the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. Sad really.
I personally don’t doubt that these are the consequences of little or no action but I agree with what Vincent said that this survey presents a huge bias to world 3 right off the bat with suggestive illustrations and careful wording. Perhaps next time a more “scientific” approach could have been used. However, I applaud you for your effort in creating more awareness and engaging people on such a large scale.
Thanks for your comments everyone. We’re pretty excited that over 37,000 young people voted (over 15,000 of these at local voting events) – it shows the youth climate movement is getting pretty huge. At the moment we’re trying to organise a meeting with Kevin Rudd to present him with the results. If anyone can help, let me know!
Beautiful work there Ms Rose. I remember going to a rally out front of Macquarie St and giving an impromptu speech maybe 10 years back. ‘The youth are being betrayed by the boomers’ was the gist. You are so right and taking action to boot. Go sister go! I hope you make PM one day. Why not?