Your Kids Are Absolutely Right to Go On Strike
Today’s adults have had decades to try to stop the looming climate cataclysm. They’ve failed. No wonder children have had enough of incrementalism.
The climate system that raised us is now dead, as David Wallace-Wells says.
Photographer: James Gourley/Getty Images
John Lanchester’s new novel “The Wall” imagines Britain after “The Change.” Following a dramatic shift in temperature and sea levels, the U.K. has barricaded off what remains of the coastline; in Lanchester’s dystopia, there aren’t any beaches left.
Young citizens bore no responsibility for any of this, but they’re the ones who must guard the wall and violently repel increasingly desperate migrants, known as “The Others.” If they fail, the young are themselves cast out to sea as punishment. Not surprisingly, they’re pretty unhappy about their lot.