General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It seems like there's a lot of dislike and contempt for "boomers" from "millennials" [View all]Orrex
(63,203 posts)It was during a grade school science class that was, in retrospect, surprisingly progressive.
The boomer-era teachers discussed various "evironmental crises," among them "the greenhouse effect," "population/food crisis," and "toxic pollution build-up." For each crisis discussed, the lesson was the same: it would be up to my generation (later called "X" to deal with it.
Well, thanks a lot. They knew enough, as a generation, to identify the problems, but it was clear that the boomers had no will to do anything about them. Certainly they couldn't possibly take steps to slow the growth of these problems or to lay the groundwork for future solutions.
So when I hear boomers complain about being scapegoated for today's myriad catastrophes, I recall that science class three decades ago, when the problems were already so clear and we had much greater resources to address them.
I don't blame any individual boomer, of course, and in fact I credit them for identifying the problems at all, but--in identifying them--they took on a responsibility that they don't seem to have fulfilled.