Search for “adult praising youth on climate action” and you’ll find lots of quotes like this one from UN Secretary-General António Guterres

I encourage you to go on, I encourage you to keep your initiative, keep your mobilization, and more and more to hold my generation accountable.  My generation has largely failed until now to preserve both justice in the world and to preserve the planet.

I have granddaughters.  I want my granddaughters to live in a liveable planet.  My generation has a huge responsibility.  It is your generation that must make us be accountable to make sure that we don’t betray the future of humankind.

or from Harvard Business Review

It may just take the youngest Americans to get companies to take a real and public stand for aggressive global action on climate change; after all, if they don’t, they risk getting out of step with an entire generation of employees and customers.

Adults are shirking and abdicating responsibility

I find the sentiment behind these quotes sickening—at least to the extent they slough off onto children responsibility they could take themselves.

Why suggest children hold adults accountable instead of holding them accountable yourself, except to let yourself off the hook? How are children supposed to hold you accountable if you can’t do it?

Why should it take the youngest to prompt action? I would expect a writer for Harvard Business Review to have better leadership skills than a bunch of kids.

Frankly, I find these adults look pathetic, not acting and trying to flatter kids to motivate them to do something you won’t.

Now here’s an image of a kid in an oil spill. Shouldn’t adults clean up the spill?

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