Generation Z fears climate change more than anything else; lives in failed system

Credit: Rosa Castaneda

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Greta Thunberg today called upon world leaders to stop using "clever accounting and creative PR" to avoid real action on climate change.  Thunberg’s chiding of world leaders seems to chime with young people’s beliefs, according to a major new study by Amnesty International.

The Amnesty poll, released yesterday on Human Rights Day asked more than 10,000 people aged 18-25 - also known as Generation Z - in 22 countries across six continents, to pick up to five major issues from a list of 23.

Of those, four out of 10 young people (41%) selected climate change, making it the most commonly cited issue globally, ahead of pollution (36%) and terrorism (31%).

“For young people the climate crisis is one of the defining challenges of their age,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International.  “This is a wake-up call to world leaders that they must take far more decisive action to tackle the climate emergency or risk betraying younger generations further.”

Global warming was also most commonly cited as one of the most important environmental issues facing the world (57%), out of 10 environmental issues such as ocean pollution, air pollution and deforestation.

In their own countries, Generation Z’s concerns extend beyond the climate crisis, reflecting the everyday struggles and concerns young people are facing and the feeling that they are  “living inside a failed system”.

At a national level corruption was most commonly cited as one of the most important issues (36%), followed by economic instability (26%), pollution (26%), income inequality (25%), climate change (22%) and violence against women (21%).

“This generation lives in a world of widening inequality, economic instability and austerity where vast numbers of people have been left behind,” said Kumi Naidoo.

“The message from young people is clear. The climate crisis, pollution, corruption and poor living standards are all windows on an alarming truth about how the powerful have exploited their power for selfish and often short-term gain.”

The survey’s findings come at a time of widespread mass protests around the world, from Algeria to Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Lebanon, and Sudan. Many of these movements have been largely led by young people and students, who have angrily called out corruption, inequality, and abuse of power and faced violent repression for doing so.

England riots one year on – Hackney’s youths reflect on freedom and safety

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Freedom/Lydia Noura, 16

To mark the anniversary of the devastating riots, which spread across the country last summer, Art Against Knives is hosting an exhibit exploring notions of freedom and safety in London’s Hackney’s diverse community.

Through film, audio, photography, painting and writing, the exhibition showcases the community’s response to the riots, police’s stop-and-search and freedom. The work is the result of collaborations between established photographers and young people from the borough.

The exhibition, which opens on Thursday 9 August at the Art Against Knives Gallery in Shoreditch and runs until the end of the month, kick-starts ‘STOP AND TALK’, a nationwide campaign that calls for better and fairer relationships between the police and young people.

The exhibit’s opening night also features a talk on journalism and the riots with award-winning Guardian journalist Paul Lewis, as well as a preview of Pagan, a short film about Kes, a 18-year-old from Hackney caught between the police and rival gangs. The film opens to the public on 31st August at Dalston Eastern Curve/V22.

For many young people, the borough is a haven of arts, culture and fashion, but for Kes and thousands who grew up here, most of the area is off-limits.  Large parts of Hackney have been claimed by one gang or another, and though most people have no idea where the borders lie, for Kes these invisible lines dictate where he goes and what he does in the place he calls home.

Instead of being able to turn to the police, young black people like Kes are 30 times more likely to be stopped-and-searched than white people, so the presence of officers on the streets only makes them feel less safe.

Stop and Search/Ondre Roach, 18

Hackney has been simmering with discontent as young people find themselves on the wrong side of the police and increasing social inequality. Last year's riots saw the borough reach boiling point.

The 'STOP AND TALK’ campaign is asking the police to try to better understand young people, connect with them and protect them rather than automatically see them as suspects.

Art Against Knives is a youth-led charity, which works to reduce the causes of knife crime through art initiatives and providing an alternative to violent gang culture.

The charity was born from the tragic and unprovoked stabbing of Oliver Hemsley, a 21-year-old student from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design. The attack, which has left Oliver in a wheelchair, took place in Shoreditch, East London in August 2008. Art Against Knives decided to create something positive from this terrible experience.

WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU? EXHIBITION- 9th- 30th August 2012

Art Against Knives Gallery, Unit 55, Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, London E1 6GJ

London riots – UK cannot just "arrest its way" out of the social breakdown.

The Government maintains that the riots, which spread through London and other cities two weeks ago,  “were not about poverty” – just mindless thugery.  But analysis of court-case data by the Guardian shows that most of the rioters were young, poor and unemployed.

A Liverpool University urban planning lecturer analyzed the Guardian’s data and found that the majority of the 1,300 people who have appeared in court so far live in poor neighbourhoods, with 41% of suspects living in one of the top 10% of most deprived places in the country. 

The findings are backed up the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), which looked at the relationship between different indicators of poverty and deprivation and the boroughs where violence and looting took place.


Researchers found that in almost all of the worst-affected areas, youth unemployment and child poverty were significantly higher than the national average while education attainment was significantly lower.

The report states: "While poverty is no excuse for criminality, it places additional pressure on families not only to make ends meet but also to spend time together … The political debate is likely to rage on for some time but there is also an urgent need to understand what is happening in communities where violence flared."

The country cannot just "arrest its way" out of the social breakdown.

But so far, all we have seen from the Government is a very punitive response.  Convicted rioters are being handed sentences that are on the average 25 per cent longer than normal ones – an average of 5 months for those charged with theft and handling stolen goods.  A mother of two was jailed for five months for receiving clothes stolen by a looter (she appealed) and kids posting messages inciting disorders of Facebook were handed a four-year sentence.  Have judges lost their minds?  

The Government instructed them to go hard on the rioters to set an example and deter further violence, and also because looting and similar offences are seen as more serious in the context of the riots.  This last argument is strange, considering that is it well known that people in groups do things they would never have done on their own.

I am not condoning the riots and I agree that rioters need to be punished, but these harsh, longer sentences will backfire. They will send hundreds of youngsters to already overcrowded prisons, where they’ll meet hardened criminals.  They will reinforce their views of a society that is unjust, biased, uncaring and punitive, and exacerbate heir feelings of alienation and resentment. 

Instead of handing them long prison sentences, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the young people to clean up, repair and improve the neighborhoods they have trashed? 

And as a society, we need to address the causes of the riots; otherwise they will flare up again. 

 Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, is advocating just that.  Taking an opposite view from the “zero tolerance” of No 10, he declared that the country cannot just "arrest its way" out of the social breakdown.

Young people needed support to help them leave gangs in equal measure to the tough sanctions they should face if they refuse to give up a life of crime, he said in an article for the Guardian.

UK Riots - mindless thugs, but why?

Rioters in Liverpool/BBC

Like everyone else in England, I am trying to make sense of the mindless violence, arson and looting that have spread first across London, then to other cities throughout the country over the last four nights. Four people have died as a result of the mayhem.

Video footages show young men and women in hoodies torching local businesses and family houses, smashing windows, overturning cars, taunting terrified shop owners and residents, ransacking shops, drinking and laughing at the police, who were clearly out-numbered and overpowered.

The images are terrifying and unsettling – especially because the looting and violence are so brazen, and because many of the young people involved, some as young as 14 or 15, seem to have such a good time smashing up the place, like it is all a big joke.

Many didn’t even bother to cover their face. Some have even posted pictures on social networking sites, proudly showing off their haul.

Two girls who took part in Monday night's riots in Croydon, London, boasted on the BBC that they were showing police and "the rich" that "we can do what we want". 

Looters, Birmingham/AFP

 And that is what it looks like. In some areas, young people pillaged for hours before the police arrived. And when the police did arrive, they seemed powerless to do anything.  This new and unexpected feeling of having power and being in control must have been intoxicating to young people who are used to feel powerless. This acted as a catalyst for more violence. 

The devastating riots, which are still spreading across the country, first flared on Saturday after a peaceful protest in Tottenham, London, over the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, 29, by police.

Commentators say the ensuing violence has nothing to do with the fatal shooting: the riots are not a social protest, but random opportunistic thuggery.

It is true that the riots don’t look like a social protest – the young people are not marching for a cause or rioting with a message; they seem to be looting, burning and smashing things up for the sake of it.

But this doesn’t mean there isn’t a deep underlying cause.

The riots started in deprived London’s boroughs hit harder with unemployment. And the recent cuts in social and educational services and programmes have only made things worse. 

The gap between rich and poor is ever growing here. Britain is now one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. And many young people, especially Blacks and Asians, see the police as adversarial and biased.

Many of the rioters have no stake in conformity and feel they have nothing to lose.

"They have no career to think about. They are not 'us'. They live out there on the margins, enraged, disappointed, capable of doing some awful things," says Prof John Pitts, a criminologist who advises several London local authorities on young people and gangs.