At Colgate, some serious overreaction to trace amounts of completely natural atmospheric gas

There's No Age Difference in Death - Commentary

As an incoming freshman last year, I had to read The Weathermakers, which I summarized to anyone who asked as "We're all gonna die in 2050." I've seen An Inconvenient Truth, too. I've got all that basic knowledge about climate change and global warming that every Colgate student probably has and that makes none of us an authority on the subject.

Today, my CORE 152 professor said that the challenge of modernity is our challenge; our generation has to fix what everyone in the past screwed up. I've heard this a million times before, and I'm sure you have too. But, in the most flowery, eloquent language I can muster, I'd just like to say that I think that's crap.

Obviously we have to try to save ourselves, because the alternative is extinction. But how is the older generations' "passing the buck" their contribution to the solution? You're still here. You still feel invested in your own and your children's futures. Why is your only involvement to shrug and tell us we better get a move on?

It just seems like one more example of what makes me feel so doomed in the first place: my cynical view, my hopeless sinking feeling, that no one can bring themselves to care enough about anyone else to ever actually get involved, come together and DO something.

If our parents and grandparents and their friends can say, 'Eh, I think I can squeeze through without being affected by this personally,' what motivation does that give us? My bet is that it will take some serious catastrophes in powerful countries to make anyone act, and then out of pure desperation. And isn't that probably the point of no return anyway? It would be so easy to do nothing. In fact, it would be this amazing excuse to live a lazy, meaningless life. Why go to college and work so hard for good grades? The world's going to end anyway. Why fight for that dream job? It's not like you'll be able to use your career after the apocalypse. Why work at all? Scrounge around and steal until 2050. Because why follow the rules when they will soon be irrelevant?