Holy mother of the sainted sixties!
Members of the Baby Boom generation are now being cast as an inexorable threat to our future. Equated, if you will, to the Great Global Warming that will wash away our beloved cities and turn our pristine forests into bug-infested swamps.
Boomers. A super-heated world. Same thing, eh?
In a recent National Post column, Andrew Coyne wagged the finger of castigation at those who dare shrink from the deadly threat posed by a zombie army of Boomers, as they stumble toward senility, sucking the juice out of all that is good and holy in their death march.
"Like global warming, population aging is a problem in the long-term that requires us to take action in the short-term," warns young Andrew. "Gradual yet inexorable, the effects of each are serious but manageable — provided we get started now, rather than wait for the crisis to be upon us. And, like global warming, population aging has its share of deniers."
Inexorable. Like the remorseless grinding of tectonic plates or the soul-sucking winds of a prairie winter.
Damn deniers! Get out on the streets, you fools, and DEAL with those Boomers before they crash through the front door and steal your BABIES away!
All very exciting and end-of-the-worldish.
Here's the thing, though.
Boomers will eventually die off. They will get buried in cemeteries, or cremated and put in vases, which will then placed on shelves until they get lost in a move. They won't bother you anymore. They won't cost you any money. They won't impinge on your life. Time will pass. The boomer generation will be no more.
Climate change, on the other hand, will upend almost every aspect of your daily life. And it will go on for a very long time. Maybe tens of thousands of years.
Boomers are a small, localized blip on the population curve. Canada and the U.S. have them in spades. Other countries not so much. The generation behind the Boomers is a lot smaller. Then there's a feeble echo. Then another dip. The trailing generations will also, in time, work, enjoy their lives to the best of their ability, have children or not. They too will retire, collect pensions and die. Life goes on.
Climate change, on the other hand, is a big, expansive smack in the face that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. There's no feeble generational echo. No Gen X or Y or Z. The world and its processes just keep amplifying their favourite things until they tire of them. And then they move into something completely different.
Global warming. Ice age. Perhaps a slight shift in axis to stir things up. A terrifying meteorite or two. Perhaps an age of really impressive volcanoes. Interspersed with a temperate inter-regnum or two for variety.The earth is never dull.
Damned baby boomers. Same as a conflagration in the world's climate, eh?
Not so much.
Don't be so darned silly, you knee-jerk Boomer haters. Is there a term for irrational fear of older relatives?
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