The greatest bulk of the world’s population of humans is growing old, and this is happening during the greatest environmental crisis the Earth has experienced since humankind rose to power: global climate change.
NO NON-SEQUITURS FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
This is not rhetoric: the quantity of people over sixty years old has doubled since 1980, and this number is predicted to surpass two billion by the year 2050. In the first half of the 21st century, this population will bloat from 11 to 22 percent of the total human population. These are statistics formed by the World Trade Organization. They go on to report that, exclusively in the U.S., those over 60 accounted for 18% of the population, and this piece will grow to a quarter of the total population by the year 2050.
As for what climate change has to do with the aging population, we’re not here to simply blame this burgeoning population for spending their entire lives reveling in the kinds of excess that sealed the 21st century’s fate in a vain celebration of its own narcissistic addictions. No, we aren’t going to say this.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
But President Obama will soon be hosting the White House Conference on Aging in Washington D.C., and he has yet to add the topic of climate change to the convention’s agenda. Many Americans believe this is a golden opportunity (pun intended) to expose this massive demographic to the most urgent social problem of our day. If he did add global climate change to the agenda, Obama would help increase political consensus regarding this ecological crisis before the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris convenes this fall.
BUSINESS AS USUAL IS RISKY AT BEST
Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Tom Steyer formed a PR campaign called Risky Business last year. It’s composed of a bipartisan series of studies explicating the economic and health risks this nation faces, with each region of the country to its own, unique fate.
Their findings were universally negative, showing the economy sliding into a state of perpetual disruption, and health dangers increasing as the environment loses its ability to maintain a hospitable atmosphere, e.g., a southerner of ordinary means will have 1.5 to 4 more heat months per year, causing him or her to witness 14 to 45 more deaths per 100,000 people. The greatest amount of risk is endured by urban and elderly residents.
IT GETS WORSE
What this means is that, in addition to it being too late to change the world’s environmental course, we also need to start planning how to curb global climate change’s impact on American subpopulations. The ones most at risk are at once the largest homogeneous chunk and the most politically involved subpopulation in the United States. Older Americans tend to vote much more often and regularly than younger ones, e.g., in the 2012 presidential election, 71% of those 64 to 75 years old voted–much higher than the measly 38% of 18 to 24 year-olds. In light of such facts, why shouldn’t Obama appeal to older adults to assist with the political struggle to adapt to global climate change?
It’s not as if it would be an outlying topic to the convention. The main theme includes such symbolically near associations as maintaining the elderly’s health. If Obama steps up, we won’t even have to do the math, here.
BUILDING A NEW climate change NARRATIVE FOR OLDER AMERICANS
Carstensen continues: “When we recognize that we don’t have all the time in the world, we see our priorities most clearly;” so perhaps concern for the prosperity of one’s family, and the world’s vital posterity can be synthesized into a potent narrative for those of us this aging citizenry is preparing to leave behind. Perhaps the graying can go green, after all.
