Too Young to Save the World? An Interview With XR Cork MAEVE MCTAGGART SITS DOWN WITH LILYA IMAN CHALA, FOUNDER OF EXTINCTION REBELLION YOUTH CORK AND COLLEAGUE CLODAGH PERROTT, TO DISCUSS YOUTH CLIMATE ACTIVISM AND THE ADULTS WHO RESIST IT.
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n a pantomime of politeness to children, older generations regularly stoop to the three-foot eye-level of a child and ask the playful “and what do you want to be when you grow up?” They fondly assume the answer to be ‘princess’ or ‘policeman’, ‘doctor’ or ‘dentist’, not to be rebuked with “what future?” in return. For young climate activists in 2019, its harder to answer questions about the future with fantasy once you begin to understand reality, once Fridays are spent striking from school to force climate action and ensure you even have a future to begin with. As I sat down with fifteen-year-old Lilya Iman Chala and seventeen-year-old Clodagh Perrott from Extinction Rebellion Youth Cork, at first I found myself assuming the same position of this baby-boomer pantomime - ready to
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hear some fantastical stories of climate action and not well-reasoned existential dread. From Greta Thunberg to Lilya and Clodagh, why is the world waiting for them to grow up before it can be saved? Greta Thunberg went from motivating to malicious in the eyes of many pundits, politicians and people when she criticised older generations at the UN Climate Summit. With a lump in her throat she exhorted that “I shouldn’t be standing here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you!” The pill that admits responsibility for climate catastrophe is one which is hard to swallow. Becoming lodged somewhere between indignancy and panic, it is easier to be angry at the adamance for change you found adorable until it became your problem too. Following Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN Climate Summit at the end of September, even “Late Late Show” host Ryan Tubridy recommended a “little return to the simple things” for the sixteen-year-old activist after her tearful condemnation of world leaders. Michael Knowles of FOX News referred to Thunberg as “a men-
tally ill Swedish child,” Andrew Bolt quaked at the “freakish influence” of the “deeply disturbed” activist, while the darkest corners of Twitter rallied around the idea that Greta Thunberg could be used in Nazi propaganda. The Asperger’s which she has long-referred to as her ‘superpower’ has become ammunition for adults hidden behind keyboards and irresponsibly-written op-eds, distorting their intolerance into some impersonation of concern. In conversation about Greta Thunberg, many have seemed to resurrect the old English proverb that “children should be seen and not heard” - the notion that young climate activists are inspirational until they are inconvenient. “I’ve seen people say abysmal things about her,” Clodagh replies when I ask if the backlash is disheartening, “but I almost feel pity for those people. You can see how terrified they are [in] their willingness to jump to conclusions to make her not matter so that they don’t have to face this looming problem.” In talking to Lilya and Clodagh, you are struck with the notion that the problem of climate change became theirs before it had to be. Lilya explains how it is not unusual
