My latest piece: As we emerge from one crisis and confront the next, Let Youth Lead, Serve and Vote via @TheTyee #ClimateEmergency thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/0… Thread follows...
As the young people in our society come to the end of a school year unlike any before, and those in their teens and early 20s in particular wrestle with what the coming year or two will look like, Canada’s Second World War story has some useful guidance to offer. 3 ideas 👇
1) Let youth lead: As in the war, youth are once again mobilizing to secure our collective future. More than any other generational cohort, polling indicates millennials understand the climate crisis & want to see real action. Help is on the way, and we should support it.
2) As Canadian teens complete their high school years, many face the uninspiring prospect of post-sec studies online this fall, and prospects for summer and subsequent employment dry up, now is the perfect time to quickly launch a new national project — a Youth Climate Corps.
A large-scale Youth Climate Corps could be aimed at young people who have finished their high school education, inviting them to spend two years volunteering on projects that seek to expedite our climate transition, with all expenses paid, just like in the military.
The program should be open to any youth who wish. And like the military, when they complete their service, they could be offered free post-secondary education or training.
Such a program could be a win-win — youth would be engaged in meaningful work and gain valuable experience for their future plans and careers, while society gains an eager army of climate warriors helping us rise to the climate emergency.
3) Let youth vote: About 700,000 of the Canadians who enlisted in the WWII were under the age of 21, meaning, they could not vote (fed voting age was 21 until 1970).
Just as the young people today who will be most impacted by climate change don’t get a say in choosing our elected leaders, so it was then that generations of young people sacrificed themselves in wars decided upon by people they were disenfranchised to select.
Many of the teenage climate strikers, in Canada and abroad, have revived the call to lower the voting age. A new initiative to lower the voting age to 16 has emerged in BC. In the UK, the young climate strikers include lowering the voting age to 16 in their manifesto.
We have all watched as these amazing, passionate and well-informed young people have sounded the emergency alarm & roused us into the streets. How preposterous that our society deems today’s climate strike leaders unfit to cast a ballot.
Denying these people the right to vote represents a grave injustice. What’s more, we need these voters. We need their clear-headed priorities in the political debate & we need those who seek election to feel the practical pressure of winning the favour of these young people.
