Youth Delegation – Child’s Play

By: David Coll

You know you’re reaching a certain vintage when your co-workers start referring to your ways and methods, with genuine or mock reverence, as “old school.” It’s an even stronger indication when they begin referring to you as a “fossil.”

From a career perspective, there’s a definite downside to aging – you begin to be perceived as someone who’s reached peak and is no longer progressing. I’m going to go out on a limb here and state, without any empirical evidence whatsoever, that this is probably even more the case for women than it is for men. And – again without statistical support – I believe this is true not only in the workplace but in society as a whole.

Your age, or appearance of age, can create the impression that you are set in your ways. Your experience may lead you to challenge ideas more often than less seasoned professionals and this is, of course, a good thing – assuming you do so with tact and diplomacy. Still, you may be unfairly tagged as jaded, curmudgeonly and hard to get along with by your younger o-workers (or ‘team players’ who ultimately just want to do things their way and seek input from others only because it is expected of them).

But beyond the greying at the temples that you’ve begun to notice, at first with alarm, you realize there may be some merit in their ‘claim’ that you are not keeping pace with change. That giant Rolodex you still flip through to locate business contacts is a sure giveaway.

But I’ve come up with one surefire way to tell if you’ve reached a certain state of fossilization – you’ve begun to disparage the young and even the young at heart. I don’t think I’ve reached that perilous precipice yet, but recent events suggest I may be close to the edge.

The turning point arrived just before Christmas, in the course of following COP 16, the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. Angered by Canada’s “inaction” and supposed obfuscation on climate change, our nation’s youth, represented by a group calling themselves the Canada Youth Delegation (CYD), had a significant presence – as much as any other nation – during this world gathering.

Ideology aside, they were chiefly concerned with three things:

that since COP 15 in Denmark, Canada has reduced its national greenhouse gas emissions targets;
that Canadian senators recently killed a climate change bill without even debating it; and,
that the Harper government plans to cut its only major renewable energy support program that funds things like the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.

Legitimate concerns, I suppose, and unless you want to be compared to the likes of Stalin, Nixon or Chauchescu, one can’t really argue with their right to protest. The CYD is an arm of another group called the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. The CYD bills itself as a diverse, “non-partisan” team of young people from across Canada who came together in Cancun to “share the voice of Canadian youth and create positive change in the international climate policy process.”

Good intentions, well stated. However, actions speak louder than words. And the actions of the CYD at Cancun were, in my opinion, embarrassing in the extreme. Apparently aligning themselves with the dubious Environmental Defence group, the CYD put its name to advertisements that were influenced more by the professional NGO crowd than the so-called voice of youth.

There were two ads in particular – one timed for the arrival of Alberta Energy Minister Ron Lippert, depicting him wearing a ideways sombrero; a second showing an empty deck chair on a beach to promote the idea that nothing was happening at OP 15, misrepresenting the name and logo of CAPP as the ‘Canadian Association of Petroleum Peddlers.’

Child’s play.

In Cancun, their protestations had little impact on delegates who are more than accustomed to such displays. But it really is a shame and somewhat of a mystery why these mollycoddled youngsters – who’ve enjoyed the benefits of a strong energy economy all their lives – continue to focus on Canada and our precious oilsands at the expense of the real climate culprits (choose from the following: U.S. coal-fired power, China, India, etc.).

So much for the CYD’s claim of being “non-partisan” and for representing the voice of Canadian youth. Then there’s the CYD slogan – “yeah we’re cool but climate change isn’t.”

I guess part of being cool these days is omitting commas at will (assuming it’s deliberate). Part of being cool is wanting to play with the big boys, the Greenpeaces and Sierra Clubs of this world. To me, that would be the farthest thing from “cool” but maybe that’s just the age thing.