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Social justice and climate action are two pieces of the same puzzle

(EurActiv, 7 May 2021) Politicians attending the Porto Social Summit this week must understand that social justice and climate action go hand in hand and are key to preventing the loss of a generation, writes Tea Jarc and Adélaïde Charlier.

Tea Jarc is President of the Youth Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation. Adélaïde Charlier is a youth climate activist. 

COVID-19 has marked our young adulthoods. We’ll look back at it and see months trapped at home, jobs lost, education turned upside down, travel banned, grief. It’s changed the course of our adolescence and young adulthood so much that it would be easy to focus forever on it. 

But we have no choice but to look to the future.

A century ago, European young people were the first lost generation. Millions of lives were lost at war or marked by trauma for decades afterwards. Now, we’re at risk of being the next lost generation – with our early lives turned upside down by COVID-19 and climate breakdown making our adulthood more difficult than we can even imagine.

We are part of a generation growing up seeing forests burn, waters rise, glaciers collapse, heatwaves kill. We know that unless we transform the way we live, we face even worse in future. That’s why a recent poll of 22,000 young Europeans found that climate change and environmental degradation were bigger concerns than the spread of infectious diseases – even amidst a pandemic.

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EurActiv, 7 May 2021: Social justice and climate action are two pieces of the same puzzle