Featured: a poem by a local teen concerned about the climate

By Paul Bean

The most upsetting thing (to me) about climate hysteria is the fear and anxiety that has been injected into our youth. Greta Thunberg has empowered an entire generation of young teens to “take climate action,” engaging school walkouts, protests, and social media campaigns to raise awareness to “fight big oil.” 

Truthfully I do not blame these kids at all. It’s what they’re being taught, (that the world is going to end in 5 years) and its all because of us terrible humans! I went through the Vermont schools system, and I can remember laying in my bed at night as a middle schooler, unable to sleep because I was afraid the ice caps would melt and flood everywhere. As a teen and young college student, I was primed right up to fight for the “green new deal” and “climate justice” as a UVM’er. While I wasn’t exactly militant or really even that much of a “true believer,” I felt pressure to be one because of my peers, my professors, and many more around me. 

If you read a recent post we ran on Bill McKibben’s event in Waitsfield, I mentioned a poem read by a teenager. It was about her frustrations with the older generations and their missteps with our climate. It is rhetoric like you are about to read that will cause humanity to forget their past, their ancestors, their history, and their bloodlines. It genuinely made me sad to hear this poem from this girl, and it is my hope that she will someday realize the dangers of the things she is saying:

This poem was published in the Valley Reporter and sent to me following our last substack post. 

“Vermont Youth Poet Laureate 15-year-old Harmony Devoe Warren, was asked to read one of her poems. 

She chose one titled “Thank You.”

“You
Twist the narrative
You
Are apathetic to the merit of
Those
Who have worked tirelessly
To please 

You

Expect
Youth
To thank you?
To be proud?

How
Could we?
After all you have wrecked,
Messed
Up

After our planet 
Is the hottest mess
It’s been
In 125,000 years

After women
Are taught to be modest
And men to hide their tears

Children layer on their fears

After the oceans
Are filled to their rising sea levels
With 199 million tons
Of your trash
Thank you take out bags

Compelling
Us 
To ask
How
Could we be proud?

Telling us
That in fact
We should be mad

I am disappointed
I am not impressed with what the adults have done
You reap what they sow
Take the money and run
To your Planet B

So
We
Are left
With the burning forests
The drained dry hearts

This future before us
Ends before it starts

We are not quite too tired
For the unbegun rest
But we won’t be quiet
We will open our chests

Our voices
Will be exposed
Our choices
Will be educated

We
Will stand
Together
Our books not banned
Our burning rage continues to be fanned
And

You
Will say
“We are proud;
Thank you”

Well what’s even the point of trying at life anyway? Right?

There’s a reason why in the 10 commandments God asks us to respect our parents. For better or worse, we have so much we can learn from our parents, our grandparents, and our elders as a whole. My family and elders would never let me read or write something like this when I was this girls age simply because of what it might reflect about them. The dynamic here is whack. Teenagers are not in a position of authority and they never should be. Any time that they are or parents are allowing them to be and we are running up on some very serious cultural issues, which I believe is quite evident today. 

This is the problem with climate hysteria and what the whole “youth” movement is all about. A bunch of angry teenagers that have literally never done anything, have no idea how the world works, they don’t even have a bank account, and their anger is entirely based on lies and manipulation. Truthfully, when they actually do learn what’s causing these climate disasters (geoengineering) they will actually be angry and perhaps even for good reason—I was for a little while. 

But through all of this, I’ve learned it is never valid to hold anything against the older generation or your parents. If they’ve loved you and raised you well, you need to understand that they only know what they know, just like you. They are also just people going through the bizarre experience called life. 

Let’s face it. By nature, children, (teenagers especially), are rebellious. They are curious about life. They are shedding the skin of their parents. They are seeing how far the boundaries actually go. They want to know if they’re really being heard, by their parents, and ultimately God (whether they realize it or not). This rebellious nature of teens is being completely overridden and highjacked by climate hysteria and dystopian doom being forced down their throats in school, popular science, and main-stream culture. Before life even began, they’re upset and angry because the believe it is over…

Where the heck is that going to get us?

I often find myself getting frustrated with the way the world is now, not just climate, but for a number of reasons. I even sometimes find myself slipping into my old rebellious teenage-self, getting mad at the generations before me wondering, “how could they have left me with such a mess? Now I gotta clean this up? Are you kidding me? Those idiots!”

But then I examine my own life and remember… most of the good things in life inherited from them too. 

And let’s not forget, I am not perfect either. I hope I don’t leave any kind of a mess behind, but if I do, I hope it isn’t too big of one… and it is definitely worth cleaning up!

The author is the VDC social media director & writer as well as a representative of the anti-geoengineering organization Our Geoengineering Age