OPINION: OK snowflakes, let's have at this.
Boomers have stolen your childhood have they? So traumatised by their tyranny you are reduced to crying in your safe spaces while hugging your emotional support hamster and wailing about the atmosphere.
Sweet Zeus; how pathetic.
Let's be clear, defining people by generation is as stupid as a vegan burger but since that is the way the game is now played, I'll play.
The main complaint against granddad is his carbon emissions threatened life as we know it, he owns property and got free university education while little Ashton has had to get a student loan.
the globe was always one misidentified flock of geese away from oblivion
It will surprise most young people, but the self-induced hysteria of climate crisis that they marinate their angst in does not make them unique. Baby Boomers lived under the shadow of an actual existential threat - nuclear weapons.
During the Cold War, which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the globe was always one misidentified flock of geese away from oblivion. This wasn't some vague uncertainty about a sea-level rise at some future date, but instant incineration with minutes' warning.
There were a half-dozen such scares, with the Cuban Missile Crisis being the best known. While waiting for death, Boomers gamely got on with the business of growing up, buying property and doing what needed to be done to get Generation X ready for school.
Nuclear winter wasn't the only dread being spread by doomsday merchants.
In 1968 The Population Bomb was published, a widely believed Malthusian polemic that predicted mass starvation caused by the burst of fecundity that we now know as Baby Boomers. In the 1970s there was a brief scare about a new ice age and in the 1980s AIDS was destined to break free from its redoubt in the gay and Haitian communities to cut a wide swath of death.
Boomers had to endure Peak Oil, the Ozone Hole, Y2K and Billy Ray Cyrus. Each crisis passed only to be replaced by a new panic, which is why they don't take whining teenagers crying into their iPhones and waving jazz hands seriously.
- Generation X are like 'second rate sandwich fillings', so what have they achieved?
- Give Baby Boomers their dues
- Policies 'hard-code' differences between Baby Boomers and younger generations
- Give Baby Boomers their dues
Now, it is true that your grandparents didn't pay for their degrees but unless they were from a relatively privileged background they probably didn't actually go to university. Most Boomers went from school to employment while their grandchildren spend years in our ever-expanding tertiary sector while managing to learn nothing.
Today nearly 10 per cent of the population is enrolled in some form of tertiary schooling, most of it useless. The cost is absurdly subsided and interest-free student loans means even the nominal cost is never fully re-paid.
And here is the real kicker: Boomers bought houses. It was the done thing and property was cheap. Today property values have racheted up to levels that trigger the toughest of millennials. People who spent a decade getting their psychology degree can't understand why they can't afford a house of their own.
Boomers could afford houses because they and their parents built them. We built more houses in the 1970s than we do today. In the insulated, protected, cotton-wool safe-space hyper-regulated world that today's young pretend-adults like to live, building and land-use regulations make knocking out cheap houses uneconomic.
This won't change because a generation raised without the ability to act unsupervised are afraid to swing a hammer without three years training and under the guidance of a health and safety officer.
And as for the argument that our emissions are heating up the planet, I have one one thing to say; pull my finger.
* Damien Grant is a Generation X-er, who identifies as a Baby Boomer
With grovelling apologies to Billy Joel
Rob Muldoon, Billy T, Chairman Mao, cask Chablis
Ozone Hole, Judy Bailey, Rainton Hastie, K'Road
Bob Tizard, The Beehive, dodgy Skodas, disk drives
All the way with LBJ, David Kirk, Waitangi Day
Whetton Brothers, bovine TB, Social Credit, melamine
Sunscreen, benzene, "Bullshit and Jelly Beans"
Doctor Who, Judge Corp, Britain joined the EU
Dawn Raids, Perigo, Bastion Point and rollerblades
Boomers didn't light the fire
It was always burning
Since the coal's been turning
Boomers didn't light the fire
But they won't retire
They don't mind your ire
Norman Kirk, Waitangi, Moruroa, Hauraki
4 Square, Tallboys, The Money or the Box
CKDs, Push Push, Think Big, Dutch Elm disease
Dennis Connor, Fred Dagg, Georgie Pie and Edam Cheese
Oil Shock, Montreal, Sam Neil, Springbox
Atomic theory, Ranfurly, Turbans in the diary
Bruce McLaren, Waihene, Harvey Crew, GST
Gleneagles, Russian Spies, OPEC, illegal highs
Boomers didn't light the fire
It was always burning
Since the coal's been turning
Boomers didn't light the fire
But they won't retire
They don't mind your ire
Land March, John Rowles, Whitebait, lawn bowls
Rachel Hunter, Erebus, Basset Road, Postie Plus
Split Enz, Maurice Gee, Prince William saw a Buzzy Bee
Greenpeace, Armed Police, hard work and elbow grease
NAC, DBP, HIV L&P
Rheineck, Prozac, Carless Days, Travellers Cheque
Dancing Cossacks, Red Bands, MMP, black sands
White Bait, Queen's Chain, Flying Nunn, Brain Drain
