The latest activity from Greta Thunberg and the strikes and marches remind us that realistically, the burden falls on our youth to galvanize long term sustained political action. If we don’t have sustained and organized action (eg through coordinated and well funded NGO’s) we’ll end up with the same situation as Occupy Wall Street…it sounded great for a while, then it fizzled. And who is in a position to provide the funding? Without funding, nothing significant will happen. That’s the hard lesson I learned as a lobbyist. Yes, indeed Washington is driven by that amorphous, headless and soulless herd of animals called money.

I was an environmental lobbyist, and I eventually had to quit because I had no financial support and resources avail to me. When I previously focused on cybersecurity reform, we had some successes because we had lobbying money and connections behind us-insurance companies and the American Banking association. Liability reform had a direct and immediate financial impact on their bottom line. Not the case with greentech…there was nobody to ensure the planet Earth and the greentech companies were too small, fragmented and disorganized.

I recently got back from Burning Man where I was playing in several bands and spent many hours at a piano bar. This gave me the opportunity to talk with a lot of young folks many of whom were interested in the environment…I had a similar conversation with many young folks, it went something like this:

1. They said my generation (Ie 40 years old and above) has the power to make the change
2. I said my generation has no power. We’re saving for retirement, paying for college , and too busy in our jobs and stuck in our ways. Plus we’ll be dead in 25+ years. My generation may have the wisdom, but your generation has the real power and the incentive.
3. They said, we don’t have that kind of power.
4. I said you have more than you think — if you socialize with more people like yourself and spend less wasting time watching your TV shows and going on Tindr…distractions that are designed to suck you in and exhaust you. And you also might find the wisdom from some of your elders to be useful. Even thought we screwed up the Planet and it may seem like we’re all stupid, some of us aren’t, we’re just isolated.

If the youth are so inclined to engage (and if they aren’t, well case closed), then how do they create a sustained, organized and focused effort? I find it interesting that the importance of NGO’s in our democratic process to be absent from education. And also the undeniable facts that the vast majority of Politicians are just like lawyers and prostitutes: they will do whatever their paying customers want them to do…without judgment and without bias. Their customers are big businesses. And our youth need a new model for funneling resources (both time and money) into a focused machine to represent all of us, including the Earth.

Organized greed is more effective than disorganized democracy

Maybe our youth can change that with our help.