Young people care a lot about climate change—
but most ofthem can’t vote. Here’s how
governments can adaptto accommodate them.
BY DAVID RUNCIMAN
JULY 20, 2019
In today’s Britain, a rare public figure can bring together
Brexiteers and Remainers, Conservatives and Labour. Yet the teenage
climate activist Greta Thunberg did just that on a visit to London in April,
when she was feted by British politicians from across the political
spectrum.
In an address to Parliament, Thunberg said she spoke for the children who
had been betrayed by politicians and voters who had failed to prevent
climate change. She also claimed to speak for the unborn billions of
people who will bear the brunt of a rapidly warming world. “I am 16 years
old,” she said. “I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future
generations. … Now we probably don’t even have a future anymore.”
It would have taken a very brave politician to downplay the stark moral
power of this message. None of her British interlocutors—from Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn to would-be Tory leader Michael Gove to the
speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow—dared. Instead, they all
accepted the charges laid against them and promised to do better.
T H E C L I M A T E C R I S I S I S A N I S S U E T H A T R E Q U I R E S
L O N G – T E R M T H I N K I N G A C R O S S T H E G E N E R A T I O N S ,
Y E T E L E C T O R A L P O L I T I C S I S G E A R E D T O W A R D
R E S P O N D I N G T O I M M E D I A T E G R I E V A N C E S .
Thunberg’s remarks showcased the profound gulf between younger and
older generations when it comes to climate politics: the clash between
those with the power to act and those who must live with the
consequences if they don’t. The climate crisis is an issue that requires
long-term thinking across the generations, yet electoral politics is geared
toward responding to immediate grievances. Politicians can talk about
taking the long view, but without institutional changes to the way we
practice democracy, they are unlikely to look beyond short-term political
gains.
The young and the old increasingly look like two distinct political tribes,
and the differences are perhaps starkest over climate change. Recent
polling in Britain indicates that for nearly half of all voters aged 18 to 24,
global warming represents the most pressing issue of our time. Less than
20 percent of voters over 65 think the same. In the United States, only 10
percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 describe climate change as a “not
very serious problem,” compared with 40 percent of those over 65 who call
it that.
Observing the generational divide on climate change is easier than
accounting for it. Thunberg’s rhetoric implies the distinction is a matter of
morality: The older generations simply don’t care about the interests of
the younger ones. Yet it is far from clear that older voters are less worried
about climate change primarily because they won’t be around to see the
worst of it. Older voters care about many things that don’t directly
concern them. For instance, in the U.K., education ranks almost as highly
for those over 65 as it does for those under 30.
Nevertheless, climate change has become a contest of worldviews split
along generational lines—and it’s a contest that older voters are winning.
That should be no surprise. After all, they are both more numerous and
more likely to vote than their younger counterparts. When Thunberg
T A C K L I N G C L I M A T E C H A N G E I S G O I N G T O R E Q U I R E
S I G N I F I C A N T B E H A V I O R A L C H A N G E : I N W H A T W E
E A T , W H E R E W E L I V E , A N D H O W W E T R A V E L .
speaks for the generations yet to come, she has the numbers on her side—
the unborn limitlessly outnumber the currently living. But when it comes
to actual voters, the math favors the climate skeptics or at least the people
who have other priorities. Our world hasn’t just warmed rapidly in recent
decades—it has also aged even faster.
If democratic politicians are to make good on their promises to Thunberg
and her peers, one of the largest barriers in their way are their own
electorates. And citizens may become more antagonistic as governments
push forward on new policies. Tackling climate change is going to require
significant behavioral change: in what we eat, where we live, and how we
travel. Current patterns of food and energy consumption are
unsustainable. If we and the planet are to survive, that will mean less
meat, smaller homes, and fewer cars.
The old, however, tend to find changing their behavior to be more difficult
than the young do. Again, this is not because they don’t care about the
future of the planet nor simply because they won’t have to live with the
consequences of failing to change. It is because age brings experience, and
experience brings an aversion to loss. The older we are, the more likely we
are to have things we don’t want to give up. People who have never driven
a car will find it far easier to do without than people who have used one for
their entire lives.
One solution to this generational imbalance might be to simply wait it out,
since younger generations will replace older ones before too long. If
generational divisions are primarily attitudinal rather than material, there
is reason to think that young people will persist in their concern about
climate change as they age. Eventually the college-educated young of the
present will become the college-educated old of the future. The climate
P E O P L E W H O H A V E N E V E R D R I V E N A C A R W I L L
F I N D I T F A R E A S I E R T O D O W I T H O U T T H A N P E O P L E
crisis will rise up the political agenda as climate-conscious generations
ascend the age ladder.
The problem is that the climate can’t wait that long. Today’s enlightened
young will not age quickly enough; decisive action needs to be taken
before 2030, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now
insists.
One way to make that happen would be to redress the imbalance directly
by lowering the voting age. Watching the 16-year-old Thunberg put
Britain’s political leaders in their place, it was hard to think of a good
reason why she should not be allowed to vote. But still, the politically
plausible proposals—such as extending the franchise to 16- and 17-year-
olds—would not be enough to make a decisive difference. The changes
that could actually tip the numerical balance—such as extending the vote
to all school-age children—are too contentious to be practicable. Giving
children the vote is unlikely to lessen generational divisions over climate
change. It could make those divisions worse—and thus set back progress
on climate policy—if it looks like an obvious ploy to diminish the voting
power of their grandparents. Maintaining the current voting age but
phasing out votes for the very elderly is likely to be just as divisive.
Appearing to gerrymander the entire electoral system, even with the best
of intentions, will do little to bring the tribes together.
Bridging the generational divide is likely to require other kinds of
institutional change. The evidence of the last 30-plus years of climate
politics suggests that electoral democracy is not well suited to reaching a
consensus on what is to be done. The inevitable partisanship of this form
of politics reinforces wider social divisions. Different perspectives on the
long-term future get turned into polarized positions on climate change,
making it harder to reach a shared perspective on carbon emissions and
renewable energy. Party politics drowns out the pursuit of common
ground.
W H O H A V E U S E D O N E F O R T H E I R E N T I R E L I V E S .
If electoral democracy is inadequate to the task of addressing climate
change, and the task is the most urgent one humanity faces, then other
kinds of politics are urgently needed. The most radical alternative of all
would be to consider moving beyond democracy altogether. The
authoritarian Chinese system has some advantages when it comes to
addressing climate change: One-party rule means freedom from electoral
cycles and less need for public consultation. Technocratic solutions that
put power in the hands of unelected experts could take key decisions out
of the hands of voters.
But there are two reasons to doubt that this is what the climate emergency
needs. First, any transition from a democratic to a post-democratic system
would be massively disruptive. The barriers in the way of action on
climate are also barriers to other forms of radical political change. There
would be resistance, including from older generations. Second, it would
not satisfy Thunberg’s generation either. She was not asking for less
democracy. She was asking for a democracy in which she could be heard.
What’s needed instead are democratic reforms capable of moving past the
generational impasse in electoral politics. One alternative is more
deliberative democracy, which would allow individuals with different
points of view to engage with each other directly, free from partisan
representation. They might not end up agreeing, but at least they would
be speaking for themselves and encountering new opportunities to reach
consensus. In citizens’ assemblies, school-age children and their
grandparents’ generation could jointly participate in political discussion
and decision-making—so long as policymakers agree to bind their own
decisions to the outcomes of these deliberations.
Another alternative would be more radical direct democracy. Politicians
who are unmoved by electoral threats, and citizens otherwise committed
to status quo policy, can sometimes be jolted into action by street protests,
especially if they are sustained over long periods of time. Thunberg’s
London trip coincided with widespread protests by the group Extinction
Rebellion, which has adopted tactics inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.
and the U.S. civil rights movement. Acts of civil disobedience brought
parts of London to a halt to raise awareness of the moral urgency of the
issue. Some of those taking part were very young—Extinction Rebellion
has a youth wing. But others were not, including Phil Kingston, who was
arrested after climbing onto the roof of a train at 83 years old.
Channeling more energy into these other forms of democracy—into
citizens’ assemblies and civil disobedience, rather than elections and
party-building—will change our politics drastically. But it may be the only
way to ensure our planet does not change beyond recognition.
David Runciman is a politics professor at Cambridge University and the author of How
Democracy Ends. This story appears in the Summer 2019 print issue.