Bruce Bisset: The future in a child's eyes

Bruce Bisset.

Overshadowed by the tragic events of March 15 was another happening that day that in its way was just as poignant, if not as brutal: the global march against climate change by the world's schoolchildren.

Thousands here, joining millions worldwide, took the day off school and marched to protest the lack of action on the part of governments and industry alike to address what, for the students, is a very dark cloud threatening to overwhelm their future.

And the best we adults could do? Tell them off for being "naughty" to miss a day's schooling – as if that matters a damn when, in the words of one banner, why study for a future that won't exist.

Actually, it is that brutal: climate change and its associated effects, such as the acidification of the ocean and the mass extinction of species, presages the end of the world as we know it. Perhaps even the end of all human life.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but already thousands are dying every day from climate change, through crop failures, water scarcity, disease, floods and fires.

While here, in our cosy fantasy paradise, we still talk about "climate change" as we do about the changing seasons: as if it's all-natural, as if it might change back, as if life will go on with just a bit more discomfort but no biggie, really.

Here's the news: human-induced climate change will change the way the entire biosphere works. For. All. Time.

No wonder the students are protesting. The wonder is that we adults are not.

Angelic 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, Sweden's modern equivalent to the Maid of Orleans, Jeanne d'Arc, has taken up figurative arms in the cause of trying to save us from ourselves and now speaks for her generation – and every next generation - in the forums of power.

But how many are listening? How many people of influence, captains of industry, potentates and presidents not only believe what she is saying but are willing to do their best to stop the mad rush to extinction?

Not many. If any.

Because no one is talking about stopping the cancer of "endless" economic growth. No-one is talking about dismantling the all-consuming greed-infused fiction of capitalism. Not when there's a dollar still to be made, eh?

No, they'd rather die first. And, guess what? They will.

Unfortunately, so will many if not all the rest of us. From our own stupidity.

When I was a student, I barely spent half my time at high school the last two years; I was busy organising protests against the Vietnam War, and printing my underground newspaper on the old Gestetner at Resistance Bookshop, and trying as hard as I could to change a sad and broken world.

I'm still trying. But the world has become far sadder and more broken in the 50 years since, and those of us who gave a damn back then are now either too tired, too comfortable, or too numbed by existence to do more than spin a few words together and hope.

If hope is an active verb, then it's for the young. These children we tsk-tsk at for daring to express themselves are the rulers of the future – if there's anything left to rule. And they know how slim their chances are.

At least they're willing to fight for a future, and if we really cared, we'd fight with and for them, too.

* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.