Old people don't really care about the environment as much as young people

This came up in my Bible study group this week as we were talking about intergenerational differences.

Here are my first five replies? What do you think?  Could you add some others?

1. They actually do care more for the environment than younger people. They turn off lights, use the dryer less, buy less disposable products and on the whole live more simply.


2. Many of them lived through the seventies, when the lastest fear campaign was global cooling.  With perspective, they are a bit "over" the hype.


3. Most of them know that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.  Plants love the stuff.


4. Through experience, for good and for ill, most them know that they are not in a position to change the world.  There are larger forces at work: perhaps the patterns of the sun is one such example.  They also remember hotter days in the past.


5. They are less impressed by "edgy videos of hockey graphs" and are somewhat cynical of anything new.  Some are also reactionary.  The more the young are "into it" in unthoughtful ways, the more some older people buck against it.

BTW.  I think we should care for the environment.  I have just become cooler on human induced global warming over the last two years.  And no, its not just my shift from Annandale to the Sutherland Shire.

I think that we need to use our brains judiciously, separated from politics and business.  The best "religious" word that I have heard comes from someone with whom I don't often find myself in agreement.  Also, BTW, he is also an old man.

We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion. Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man.

Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

Pope Benedict XVI, 1 January 2008