Sustainable Views: Age, gender and Jordan Peterson's influence

Hello and welcome to Sustainable Views. My name is Alex Jaignot and I'm the Senior Investment Correspondent on our title. Today, as part of our series on education, I'm joined by two experts to discuss age and gender in the context of climate change. There's a substantial body of evidence that suggests that different ages and genders display varying degrees of engagement with climate change. Climate, which begs the question as to whether policymakers should consider more bespoke approaches to climate change. I'm joined by Meera Manini Tewari, a research associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, and Akhil Kalenda, youth lead at UN Sustainable Energy for All. So Akhil, Meera, thank you for joining me today. Akhil, why don't you start by telling me a bit about your role with the United Nations?

Thanks, Alex. So I am the youth specialist at Sustainable Energy for All. It's a United Nations partner organization that was founded in 2012 by Ban Ki-moon that's focused on SDG 7, so sustainable, modern, reliable energy services and clean, of course, energy services for everyone on the planet. My role as youth specialist revolves around ensuring that there are opportunities, be it for professional development, for capacity building, for education, access to platforms for advocacy and dialogue, and of course building the data and evidence base for youth work, with youth being young people between the ages of 18 to 35, around SDG 7. So that's, that's a bit of what I do.

Now, there's a growing body of research that suggests that different age brackets engage with climate change in a variety of ways. So, Ikenna, what are the most important lessons in your view from these findings?

It is quite prevalent and quite clear, I guess, even from events of the past decade that we've seen, you know, this growing momentum and this growing interest that has primarily been driven by youth who have realized that climate change is an existential crisis and are in a position to advocate for their own futures. So there's this this very purposeful advocacy for what is essentially their lives. But there's also a growing body of evidence and data that is illustrating that youth are, out of the different age groups, more concerned. And there is a global warming age gap where we are seeing more and more bodies of research saying that, for example, there was a study done by Gallup in 2018, which showed that 70% of adults between the ages of 18 to 34 said they were worried about global warming compared to 56% of people aged 55 or older. So you have this evidence showing that younger generations are more actively involved. And then we can see this in the way that climate action and advocacy and activism is also taking place around the world. Yeah.

So what can policymakers do with this information? Do you advocate approaches that target different age demographics?

I think there absolutely needs to be age-specific policy in place. Young people as a demographic may not necessarily have the same access, the same access to platforms, first of all, to be engaged in high-level dialogues and to have seats at the tables when decisions are being made. They do not necessarily have the same access to finance to ensure that they can have a part to play through entrepreneurship and through gaining access to funding, be it through job, meaningful employment as well, to contribute to the sector. And so there is a need for policies to be put in place that create this enabling environment for youth to take part in everything related to SDG 7, be it energy finance, be it clean cooking, scaling up access to clean energy, and of course, the energy transition that will happen in a just and equitable way. And then also remembering that young people are an amazing resource that, that can really be leveraged because we are quite innovative as a population. We are the most technically savvy population of all time, possibly. And there are huge needs for energy transition workers across the world. I think the latest IEA report quoted that around 12 million new jobs are needed to help bring about net zero by 2050. And so this is not jobs that we have of, you know, shifting from fossil fuel workers who have already been engaged in the energy sector into clean energy. This is new jobs and we are already seeing skill gaps and the need for more skilled workers.

Now, Meera, what are your thoughts on taking bespoke approaches to different age groups on the matter of climate change?

I think the really key or operative word there is different age groups and that layering of kind of transversal approaches. I agree fully with everything that Aquil's been saying about what sets younger generations apart in terms of their approach to climate change, their need to tackle it, or their perceived need to tackle it in a way that wasn't perceived in previous generations. But I also think it's really important to set set aside what it is that young people have access to that older generations might not. When we're speaking about using data and using knowledge on different approaches, we spoke a lot earlier about finding innovative solutions to climate change. And a lot of that comes from knowing the best practices around the world and knowing what's happening in a very local context, in a very meaningful context. And that kind of information really often comes about through access to social media or platforms in which younger people are more tuned in to figuring out alternative narratives from what's coming out in a mainstream standard policy discourse. And there at the same time, you have to have that complemented with older generations that have series of experiences, abilities to bring together policymakers, researchers, and younger people in a very specific policy context. That means not changing everything from one day to the next. It's important to say that these are really concrete changes that can happen at a very, very, very minute level. Citizen assemblies can very concretely decide tomorrow to bring together different age groups in one space. It's also important to recognize that these intersections are very localized. So there's interesting research and work done recognizing that in many parts of the world, the exclusive focus on young people actually breaks apart some of that societal cohesion that would lead towards greater societal learning. So if we're thinking about education for climate change, that has to be a shift that comes across all generations. Targeting only one group of the population, that is seen as the changemakers, and they are, but neglecting the other part of the population risks taking forward a solution that doesn't actually take root in the meanings of a society. So if you've got a context where elder knowledge is really important, then bringing that in and saying, what's your knowledge and what is the exposure that the younger generations have and the innovation and the ability to work with new information, and very concretely putting that together in a solution tomorrow, is actually a lot more feasible than trying to overturn an entire system in a more abstract way.

And as well as age, we know that different genders respond differently to climate change too, Mira. So what can we do with that information?

Yeah, this is really interesting. So you have a few strands coming in here. You have the different responses that genders have in terms of our socialization. You tend to have women being more oriented towards collective responses to climate change, oriented towards very concrete action in their daily lives towards climate change and more concern. And some of the theories that come out of that are, okay, you have a world in which women are socialized into more collective community spaces. We are seeing a shift in which we are bringing women into the policymaking sphere and into the science and research sphere and trying to bring that lens into how we're shaping climate policy. We're not necessarily seeing a shift that would drive those attitudinal changes in the other half of the population, i.e., the male population as well. So there, a really interesting element is to say, how do you bring that knowledge into the space? And how do you also make that knowledge and those approaches more diffuse? And that ties into much wider, again, going back into the concept of societal learning and collective education, that goes into much wider labour policies, domestic policies, and education policies that mean you push the entire population towards a more collective idea, be it your domestic roles, be it your work. And in that, it's very important to also figure out the localization, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of age and how in different communities, different age groups play different roles. The exact same thing comes out in terms of gender. So when you're thinking about specific climate solutions, you think about what is it that the younger population can contribute? What can the older population contribute? But what is the role that each gender is playing in that community? Perhaps you have the male population that's undertaking a very specific task. There's an interesting example of fisheries in the Mediterranean. So you have the male fishermen, but the key to convincing the male fishermen and to engaging that wider community actually comes about through the fishermen's wives and daughters. And that's where that role of gender also takes on a very, very, very tangible, immediate impact.

Now, we at Sustainable Views have done extensive reporting on the anti-ESG movement, which is primarily based in the United States. Now, I'm aware that this is taking hold particularly with certain age and gender demographics. So Mira, can you enlighten us any further? And what's to be done about climate denialism, particularly among young men?

This comes back into what we were discussing just now about very, very systemic approaches. And there are connections between how we're moving forward in terms of gender, age, climate, and economic policy that are all connected. As you mentioned earlier, you have women moving into new social spheres, rightfully so. So we're working to bring women into STEM, working to bring women to policymaking, creating new role models. That shift in role models is not necessarily happening for the other half of the population. So in the male half of the population. And if you think about taking your society forward as a whole, that solution has to be addressing the collective intersections. And what we're seeing is a general shift towards other actors taking the place of those role models. So you have actors such as Jordan Peterson, who in the past few years have very much transitioned into being political, economic, social role models for a lot of young men, transboundary role models because of the nature of their platforms. And bringing in political angles such as commenting on climate change at a very, very, very extensive and explicit level, fostering climate denialism in very standard arguments that we've been seeing since, you know, the late 20th century, but that should not have a place in terms of climate narratives and especially under younger generations today. And that creates a collective shift towards more voting for, well, climate denial or anti-climate action political leaders. So very distantly, and it might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but actually working on climate denialism means setting out new holistic, collective, critical role models for both genders that mean that they have a better idea of how they can move forward.

I mean, Eirik Hill is a UN youth climate leader. It doesn't sound like the likes of Jordan Peterson have made a particularly big impact on you in terms of climate change. But does any of what mirrors Amira said to you resonate with you? I think particularly interested in this idea of role models.

Yes, absolutely, Alex. Amira is 100% correct. But what we tend to see in the climate space is you have a lot of support. In many cases, we are speaking to rooms full of people who already believe in the same cause that we believe in, are already aware of the dangers of climate change, and are intimately aware of what will happen if we don't manage to keep the rise in emissions below a certain point, the rise in temperatures below 1.5. So what we tend to not see in the youth climate space are these leaders that Meera has just referred to where, you know, just basically based off of, you know, the social media algorithms that people may be privy to, the types of accounts that they follow, you know, they're very much getting information and data that are geared toward their beliefs. And so it's kind of like preaching to the choir. And so what we really need to do in the youth climate space more broadly is really work to try to shift the narrative for those who are not intimately involved in climate and really try to change the game for the layperson. And we've seen success stories of this, but as Mira has rightfully said, there are a lot of competing role models who, quite honestly, for many young men are a much more compelling argument than listening to some youth climate activists. And so this is something that we really need to work on creating, you know, more leaders who these young men can, for whatever reason, relate to and get more involved. For me personally, every mentor that I have had since I've entered this space has been an incredible female leader, you know, and so that for me, that has been a very different story. And it's been something that I can can proudly say, because if it weren't for them, I would not be where I am today. But I don't know that it has the same effect on me, on other young men, that it has on me. And so I think collectively what we really need to be doing is shaping the way that we, you know, bring these climate arguments and these rationalisms for climate change mitigation and adaptation and such a key important issue to the forefront for the entire community and start to change some of the views and perspectives and challenge these ingrained beliefs that young men have, that we don't necessarily have to do the same for young women because they're already pretty much on board. So that's kind of what I've seen from my own experiences.

Akil, Mira, thank you very much for joining us today.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Mira.

Thank you.

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