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OPINION 26 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 MARCH 2019 The terror of climate change is transforming young people's identity Blanche Verlie is Associate Lecturer, RMIT University TheConversation.eu THIS week, at least 50 rallies planned across Australia are expected to draw thousands of students who are walking out of school to protest climate change inaction. These Australian students join children from over 82 countries who are striking to highlight systemic failure to address climate change. But the strikes represent more than frustration and resistance. They are evidence of an even bigger process of transformation. My research investigates how young peo- ple's sense of self, identity, and existence is being fundamen- tally altered by climate change. Canaries in the coalmine Striking children are experi- encing "existential whiplash", caught between two forces. One is a dominant culture driven by fossil fuel consump- tion that emphasises indi- vidual success, encapsulated by Resources Minister Matt Canavan's remarks that strik- ing students will never get a "real job": The best thing you'll learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole queue. Because that's what your fu- ture life will look like […] not actually taking charge of your life and getting a real job. On the other hand is the mounting evidence that cli- mate change will make parts of the planet inhospitable to human (and other) life, and fundamentally change our way of life in the future. Children are up to date with the facts: The Earth is cur- rently experiencing its 6th mass extinction; Australia has just had its hottest summer on record; and experts warn we have just 11 years left to ensure we avoid the misery of exceeding 1.5 degrees of planetary warming. Meanwhile many Austral- ian adults have been living what sociologist Kari Nor- gaard terms a "double reality": explicitly acknowledging that climate change is real, while continuing to live as though it is not. But as climatic changes intensify and interrupt our business-as-usual lifestyles, many more Australians are likely to experience the cli- mate trauma that school strik- ers are grappling with. Climate challenged culture Confronting the realities of climate change can lead to overwhelming anxiety and grief, and of course, for those of us in high carbon societies, guilt. This can be extremely uncomfortable. These feel- ings arise partly because climate change challenges our dominant cultural narratives, assumptions and values, and thus, our sense of self and identity. Climate change chal- lenges the beliefs that: - humans are, or can be, separate from the non-human world; - individual humans have significant control over the world and their lives; - if you work hard, you will have a bright future; - your elected representa- tives care about you; - adults generally have chil- dren's best interests at heart and can or will act in accord- ance with that; - if you want to be a "good person" you, as an individual, can simply choose to act ethi- cally. Faced with these challenges, it can seem easier in the short term to turn away than to try to respond. But the short term is not an option for young people. A sign of the times Striking students are call- ing out that simply standing by means being complicit in climate change. The school strikers, and those who sup- port them, are deeply an- guished about what a busi- ness-as-usual future might hold for them and others. Striking students' signs proclaim "no graduation on a dead planet" and "we won't die of old age, we will die from climate change". This is not hyperbole but a genuine engagement with what climate change means for their lives, as well as their deaths. Notably, they are openly dis- cussing and promoting engage- ment with climate distress as a means of inspiring action. As Greta Thunberg – who started the school strikes for climate – said in January: "I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act." They know certain possibili- ties have already been stolen from them by the older gen- erations. Rather than trying to hold onto dominant cultural narratives about their future, striking students are letting them go and crafting alter- natives. They are enduring the pain of the climate crisis, while labouring to generate desirable and possible, though always uncertain, futures. By connecting with other concerned young people across the world, this move- ment is creating a more collective and ecologically attuned identity. They are both more ambi- tious and humble than our dominant (non)responses to climate change. This is palpable in signs like "Mother Nature does not need us; We need Mother Nature" and "Seas are rising, so are we". What will eventually happen – in terms of both cultural and climatic change – is of course, unknowable. But it is promising that children are already forging new identities and cultures that may have a chance of survival on our finite blue planet. As adults, we would do well to recognise the necessity of facing up to the most gro- tesque elements of climate change. Perhaps then we too may step up to the challenge of cultural transformation. Blanche Verlie Leasing may be co-funded through European Union Funding and Bilateral Funds LEASING OF PREMISES TO HOUSE DEPARTMENTS AND ENTITIES WITHIN THE MINISTRY FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS AND EQUALITY The Ministry for European Affairs and Equality is accepting offers for the leasing of premises to house departments and entities within the Ministry for European Affairs and Equality. Offers are to be submitted in a tender box for the attention of the Permanent Secretary (Administration), Ministry for European Affairs and Equality, 31B, Tal-Pilar, Marsamxett Road, Valletta, VLT 1850 by not later than 9.30am of Thursday 11 th April 2019. Further details may be obtained from the Ministry's website: https://meae.gov.mt (under the section Tenders and Quotations) Blanche Verlie Swedish eight-year-old Greta Thunberg's strike for climate change. She has inspired a global movement of school strikes