A new deal for the young: saving the environment

No generation should face a future blighted by a chaotic climate and environmental devastation, yet today’s young people do. Their parents were the beneficiaries of the Great Acceleration — a postwar explosion in human activity with few recent precedents. In the past 50 years, prosperity for millions has risen and the population has doubled. Natural resource extraction has tripled, helping to fuel an almost fivefold increase in the global economy.

Young people have been left to pick up the environmental bill. They live in a world of poisoned rivers, dirty air, razed forests and acidifying oceans polluted by plastic. The UN says 1m of an estimated 8m species of plants and animals are now threatened with extinction. Greenhouse gas emissions are on course to warm temperatures enough to make today’s melting ice sheets and extreme weather look like the opening act to a climate tragedy of unthinkable proportions.

All is by no means lost. Despite predictions that the coronavirus crisis would sap enthusiasm for environmental action, the reverse is happening in many parts of the world. Global investment in renewables and other clean technologies has reached record levels, as have green bonds and electric car sales. Countries and companies alike are racing to set net-zero emission targets. Investors are demanding companies clean up their acts. 

This is encouraging but inadequate, as young people rightly point out, especially when it comes to the overwhelming threat of global warming.

FT series: A New Deal for the Young

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Monday Housing affordability is a problem in many countries. How can we fix the crisis?

Tuesday How to secure a decent pension for today’s younger generation. A third way is needed.

Wednesday Building better jobs: like every generation before them, young people desire decent, secure employment with prospects.

Thursday A rethink on education: who should pay for university education, and what about those who don’t go?

Friday Young people face a future of environmental destruction. What can be done to fix it?

Saturday Taxing fairly: today’s young face the burden of supporting older generations but benefit much less at the start and end of their working lives.

Today’s changes in climate systems have occurred because Earth has warmed by an average of just over 1C since 1880. To stop that figure rising above 1.5C, which would bring more climate disruption, scientists say emissions should fall by about 45 per cent by 2030 from 2010 levels and reach net zero by around 2050. Nothing like that decline is on the horizon yet, despite new pledges made at US president Joe Biden’s leaders climate summit last week. The pace and scale of action to cut emissions must be radically accelerated. 

Since burning fossil fuels for energy is the single biggest source of man-made emissions, and the cost of green alternatives is falling fast, action should start here. A fast phaseout of coal and fossil fuel subsidies is needed, along with carbon pricing, carbon border taxes, supercharged green finance, funding for negative emissions technologies, and forest protection. 

Critics urging moderation must remember it has typically taken 50 to 60 years for a large-scale energy transition from one dominant fuel to another. This one must be done in less than 30 years, globally. Pandemic recovery spending offers a vital chance to speed up the systemic changes needed, yet just 12 per cent of rich country stimulus spending announced by the start of this year was green.

Young workers, who have borne the brunt of pandemic job losses, deserve better. And carbon emissions should not be the only focus. There is no point creating a green global energy system if it is used to maintain unsustainable levels of natural resource extraction.

Farming accounts for much environmental destruction, and a large chunk of the climate problem, yet an estimated third of food produced globally is lost or wasted. This wastage will need to end, and surging meat consumption to fall. Relentless recycling and an end to the planned obsolescence of goods must become the norm. 

Young people deserve a new deal for the environment, delivered at a pace never attempted before. If that seems unimaginable, so does their future without it.

Join a live debate with FT writers on how to save the environment at 2pm BST on Friday 30 April. Register here for your free ticket.

Other editorials and pieces in this series can be found at ft.com/newdeal