Dignified life

Surely the measure of civilised society is one in which we can live out lives safely, happily and be looked after when we are elderly or vulnerable.

The way things are going now, when I am 75 (roughly 50 yeas away) the world is going to be much warmer, the oil availability much lower and more expensive, the population 9 billion plus, water less plentiful and hopefully a carbon tax preventing or reducing our emissions growth.

I won’t have the dignity of a pleasant retirement to appreciate and reflect on life with good health care or the natural beauty of the world as it is now. We are making it impossible to foresee a life where I can live in the way our current grandparents live.

On this basic measure being one of self-preservation in our more vulnerable years- I think we need to make some hard choices in reducing our emissions and still allowing for a dignified future.

One approach I might suggest would be in basic terms to:

1. Globally agree on a “safe” level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to avoid the 2 Degree plus global average temperature increase (with a policy to alter the target only when stability is reached or make it even tighter if we’re progressing too slowly).
2. Take stock of the number of people on the planet now or in the projected pipeline and divide the number of people by the amount of CO2 “globally allowed” so that a sum can be applied to how much CO2 each person is allocated.
3. Use this figure of CO2 to work out if there is enough “give” in the system to allow an individual under the cap to have a “dignified” quality life- an ambiguous calculus but something we make a judgment call on.
4. We then pull it all together to determine how many people the planet can have which keep us below the worst case CO2 concentration that can have that dignified life.
5. Result: Once we calculate this we have all the evidence we need to make a decision. If we come out with a poor and unacceptable quality of life then we can quickly work out in the maths how many people we can sustain in order to have the best chance of avoiding the warming to preserve the dignified life. We then define the population “goals” to keep us honest and under the planets tolerances whilst still allowing each person with at least some CO2 emissions.

Logically it is pretty simple, keep us below the threshold where formula mouths to feed/water/transport becomes untenable. We might not like what we hear when we do this process… we will certainly have passed the threshold but our decisions and actions will be applauded if we get it right.

Lets face it, if we get it wrong- the planet will find a way of bumping us off.

Difficult generation

Gen-Y are a big management problem.

According to all form of legitimate mainstream media and business commentators we are singled-out as some sort of major issue in the current workforce. It is said that Gen-Y needs to learn to be patient, demands everything right now, is greedy, yet is apparently under-skilled in so many ways – therefore a pain to employers and a management nightmare.

It is easy to be stereotyped into these categories, as it is for any generation. Though a problem I’ve observed from employers of Gen-Y staff is that they often treat them as though, because of their age, they assume that they are not mature enough to handle much responsibility, while assuming that because they are a web-savvy, computer generation that they should know everything that is remotely connected to a computer, inside out.

Baby boomers especially seem to have a real problem with Gen-Ys, but not so much with Gen-Xs. Noteworthy is that Gen-Xs were the last generation to actually be able to afford houses, so they are perceived in outdated views to be somehow more mature, reliable, rounded characters – just like the baby boomers.

Baby boomers own all the cards in Australia and much of the world, and receive the majority of government-bribes each budget and election cycle. They own everything; they also contributed to but also inherited a great deal from their parents.

Gen-Ys will only hope inherit the environmental and social consequences of the baby boomers excesses and lack of investment in infrastructure. An under-reported trend that separates the baby boomers from their parents is that many baby boomers inherited or stand to inherit significant estate. An emerging trend of among baby boomers now is to spend every last dollar they have access to on their retirement and leave the future generations to take care of themselves once they reach adulthood.

Baby boomers in many cases have worked hard in their childhoods to support their parents. They also had free university education, free health care, and all manner of government support including last of the pensions. Gen-Y have $100,000 degrees, forced $80 a month private health care, no government support (unless they start a family) and in many cases cannot expect any inheritance. It can be argued that the opportunities presented to Gen-Ys and the strength of the economy means that they don’t deserve an estate… an interesting double standard.

This generational attitude applies to the workforce as well. When a Gen-Y wants to simply do their job, not be belittled and even possibly get recognised for it, baby boomer employers exclaim “No! wait a minute, you are earning good money for your age, so no; I think you have done well and I want you to keep helping me“. Translated: “Make me look innovative, but I’ll take home the fruits of success”.

Don’t be so surprised that I left an employer when he told me exactly this; you see, he could find nothing but positive feedback in my work (from my clients) and I was personally generating one third of a million each year and taking home less than the interest they’d have earned on this cash in the bank each year. I actually had no overheads outside of the software I was using, the office space and utilities.

I should have reported such ageism to some sort of workplace authority, but instead I looked elsewhere for work and went to an employer that paid me even less, but respected my abilities and restored my confidence, and that respect extended right up to the personal recognition of the directors.

Because of the respect for my abilities and not for my age, I committed to work many more hours that was expected (12 hour days for a good year running) and overheard my Gen-X and baby-boomer colleagues demanding left-right-and-centre for increased pay, more conditions and talking up their work so that it would make them look good on paper – not in quantifiable results.

Many Gen-Ys are highly capable due to their open minds, with the ability to really consider the triple-bottom-line, not just profit and growth at all costs – and of course their adaptability. With such attributes some should actually be put in more positions of power and influence – except the baby boomers and Gen-Xs will not allow it.

This is why so many Gen-Ys want to set up their own companies and foster highly sociable cultures with their staff and have a drink with them, not jump into their luxury cars and drive home early on Friday afternoons to get away to their third or fourth investment property for the weekend.

Gen-Y workers and business owners can hope their efforts will be recognised through the output they produce – and not by the age on their licenses.

It is up to everyone to appreciate the Gen-Ys ability to adapt to change and be a positive influence in the workplace as much as the Gen-Ys look up to their baby boomer bosses for guidance and inspiration. Respect is a mutual thing, Gen-Ys would like to see their efforts appreciated and not to read about themselves as a problem to be managed.