My generation didn't do the green thing.

a reply to: Greathouse

Being imperfect isn't a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It give you room to grow and learn. The problem is actually growing and learning from mistakes. Some people don't.

originally posted by: Greathouse
a reply to: mc_squared

They want to blame everything on the older generation

I think that's hyperbole - some divisive FOX News style character assassination regarding lazy hipsters. Not reality. I'm involved with a lot of environmentally active young people and exactly 0% of them sit around blaming the older generation for how we got here. The past is the past and nothing can change that - all we can do is learn from our mistakes and move forward.

Where I think there is (legitimate) blame targeted is in relation to your next point:

The vast majority of the millennium generation has not taken any steps.

Ok let's say this is true - then why not? Many young people may be apathetic sheep who don't give a damn, but that's a timeless tradition of human nature that transcends generational gaps.

The ones who do give a damn though, the ones trying to make a difference, are met with fierce resistance - primarily from 2 sources:

#1. "the establishment" I described before, those making all the money off this system that don't want to give up the cash cow anytime soon.

#2. the people who mindlessly support this establishment with no real clue what they're even really fighting for. It's no secret this group is largely made up of (a generally confused) older audience. The Tea Party, long hijacked by the Koch brothers and other corporate interests, is a perfect example. These folks are being flat out brainwashed and exploited:



And don't even get me started on the climate change crowd. I've been studying the propaganda machine surrounding climate denial for years, and the shills behind this campaign have been deliberately targeting older individuals since the beginning:



If you took a survey of climate skeptics on ATS, million bucks says the majority are cranky old conservative males.


Doesn't mean that's their fault though - but in light of this agenda they have a choice: they can either weigh this new info out against other stubbornly held predispositions and stereotypes (and deny ignorance) - or they can just continue to ignore such facts while hanging onto more silly stereotypes about "the kids today", blissfully unaware what a complete stereotype they have become unto themselves as a result.

a reply to: mc_squared

No you're still not really getting a point. You're just taking one sentence out of the post and firing off on it.


Here's the point. This generation is also polluting the world. I can admit my generation polluted the world but we also tried to fix it.

Take you for example you offered excuses for why you are polluting the world. It's that type of smugness the whole thread is about.

There would probably be a lot more progress made if the smog attitudes were dropped.


Oh yeah and............


Get off my lawn!!!!!!!

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Metallicus
This is right on the money.

I keep thinking about how my mom would have laughed herself to death if I had asked her to drive me around when I was a kid. She would tell me to get walking or ride my bike.

It it snowed or rained before school I bundled up or took an umbrella. There were no rides to school.

Of course, for you and I, if someone saw us walking to school, even at the age of 5, or riding our bikes later on ... no one thought we were in danger and called the cops to turn our mothers in for child endangerment, either.

That is so true. It was normal for kids to walk to school. I laugh at the kids these days that want a ride to school from only a mile away or so. My daughter complains if it rains or snows or if it is cold, but thinking back my mom would have told me to wear layers. I don't regret it at all. It was good exercise and toughened me up.

originally posted by: Skid Mark
a reply to: Greathouse

Being imperfect isn't a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It give you room to grow and learn. The problem is actually growing and learning from mistakes. Some people don't.

I don't think perfect people ever come to this physical incarnation. If you were perfect you wouldn't need Earth's classroom.

a reply to: Metallicus

Give this man a cigar! He won the grand prize. So true. There would be no reason to be born.

a reply to: mc_squared

A self important college freshman walking along the beach took it up on himself to explain to an older gentleman resting on the steps, why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation.

"You grew up in a different world, almost a primitive one", he explained loudly enough for others to hear.
He continued, "the young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, man walking on the moon. We have nuclear energy, ships and cell phones, computers with light speed and so much more."

After a brief silence, the senior citizen responded:

"You're right son. We didn't have those things when we were young, so we invented them.

And now, you arrogant little sh!t, what are you doing for the next generation?"

Americans in general just don't do recycling very well at all. Americans use a quarter of the world's resources and pretty much recycle NOTHING.

It's time to start with bottles and cans, the rest will follow.

a reply to: Metallicus

Well said!


I can attest this statement, being as I am almost as perfect as they come. Lol

We were told to conserve you must use four squares of TP to save paper.

That takes real talent at conservation.

It's takes brush strokes on par with Rembrandt to get that thing clean with 4 sheets.

And, if you couldn't learn how to do it with four, Green wasn't the color you worried about.

a reply to: whyamIhere

Star for hilarity!

you know, being somewhere in the middle between young and old, I have a few thoughts.

From my point of view, through people I've met in real life and on social media (but only counting people I've met in real life, seeing their posts on facebook for instance,) I see by a large large margin way more older people bitching about youngsters "supposedly" blaming them then I ever see or hear youngsters actually blaming older folk... I mean really... It's like some kind of weird paranoia, a straw man trope. Every week I see a one of my older acquintences (but never my older artistic hippie artist author poet acquintences,) post some meme like this green meme and the clueless young person, but never do I see a post by my younger friends calling out the older generation. Instead, my younger friends all look up to their wise elders, but that is earned through wisdom and not time spent on earth. My wise old friends don't stereotype a whole generation. Stereotyping a whole generation is ignorance, not age.

quintuple post browser crash *sigh*

browser crash quadruple post

browser crash quadruple post

browser crash quadruple post

a reply to: Greathouse

So true. Right on Greathouse. Great thread. Thanks. MS

a reply to: Greathouse

I don’t think you guys are getting what I’m saying: it’s not about blaming one generation or the other for who pollutes the most. Like I wrote in my first reply - turning this into a pissing contest misses the bigger picture entirely.

This is a conspiracy site and I’m simply applying the conspiracy angle to it:

Today there is a very active (but subversive) campaign to derail environmental activism. It works in many different ways: young people are generally conditioned towards apathy, e.g. keeping up with the Kardashians instead of issues that actually matter. But older generations, who like to think they have the wisdom and experience to be above all that, are manipulated in many other ways, often not just towards apathy – but full-blown anti-environmentalism.

I don’t know what this thread really aims to accomplish: nostalgia's all well and good, but why the need to marginalize something else in its name?

a reply to: AudioOne

I see by a large large margin way more older people bitching about youngsters "supposedly" blaming them then I ever see or hear youngsters actually blaming older folk... I mean really... It's like some kind of weird paranoia, a straw man trope. Every week I see a one of my older acquintences (but never my older artistic hippie artist author poet acquintences,) post some meme like this green meme and the clueless young person, but never do I see a post by my younger friends calling out the older generation.

This is exactly what I was getting at. I don’t see it coming from the youths either, but I see the stereotype persisting anyway. It’s just propaganda designed to confuse and derail the issue altogether. People love to focus on silly distractions or perceived hypocrisies rather than real issues.

Another classic example is the obsession with celebrities who talk about going green, but live in giant mansions or fly private jets. As if this anecdotal fluff takes away from the actual message and benefits of being more environmentally conscious.

These are deliberate tactics though, employed by shills who specifically want to make people environmentally unconscious.

“Use humor to minimize or marginalize the people on the other side,” he added.

“There is nothing the public likes more than tearing down celebrities and playing up the hypocrisy angle,” his colleague Mr. Hubbard said, citing billboard advertisements planned for Pennsylvania that featured Robert Redford. “Demands green living,” they read. “Flies on private jets.”

Secretly taped insider lobbyist talk on strategies of anti-environmentalism

a reply to: mc_squared

I understand what you're saying but then, what you're saying turned right back to the opposite of what you're saying. You keep saying that shouldn't be a generational pissing match and I agree. Then later you make a statement like this........

But older generations, who like to think they have the wisdom and experience to be above all that, are manipulated in many other ways, often not just towards apathy – but full-blown anti-environmentalism.

There is the opinionated smugness that was the point of this whole thread. Reread that quote you just said the older generation is dumb, manipulated and leans towards anti-environmentalism. Dude we're well aware of current circumstances we live on this planet too.


And it goes right back to a pissing match which we shouldn't be doing in the first place. Actually the reason the older generation tends to be opinionated on the past is because they lived in it.