The Planet Generation

By Paul Glover

During 500 years of European conquest, the North American continent has gradually filled with skyscrapers, suburbs, highways and shopping malls. It has been the stage for endless cultural and economic struggles.

Often we explain America’s evolution by labeling its generations– like Greatest, Boomer, X, Millennial. All these generations overlap and mark their young. And so far they have shared another thing in common. Since Europeans arrived, Americans have withdrawn the continent’s original natural abundance. Pure water drains out; air is made foul. Deep fertile soils are scraped bare. Clouds of birds and hordes of beasts are destroyed. Quiet wild places are replaced by tall dull walls.

While environmentalists urged restraint during the past 180 years, the Trumpet of Progress grew more shrill. People were led onto treadmills of debt for home loans, student loans, shopping sprees, car loans.

Therefore today, for the first time, after these many generations, with seven billion humans upon the earth, there is no further planet to occupy. There is little natural wealth remaining for grandchildren. Time for analysis is gone. There is no room for error.

So the Planet generation, born beginning 2005, will welcome the challenge to fix what’s broken. From this world of crisis they’ll embrace a world of possibility. They will build cities as beautiful as themselves, then visit replenished nature.

Their allies from earlier generations, especially Millennials, have begun preparing this transformation. They realize their most essential possession is a stable society on a healthy planet. They see the connections between consumerism and destruction, so they live simply. They ignore advertisements.

They not only recycle, they don’t buy stuff. They create stuff instead and trade it. They’ve declared independence from bankers, and live within an economy of generosity, relying on community currencies and friends.

They’re healthier and sexier because they ride bicycles and avoid cars. They craft tiny solar houses, to avoid mortgages and utility bills. They spread urban agriculture, to weave nature into cities. They’re increasingly vegetarian or vegan, to end mass slaughter of animals and habitat. They have one or fewer children.

The Planet generation will have no interest in jobs that manage destruction. They will reinvent civilization, starting where they live. Thus they’ll create their own free universities to teach neighborhood management. They will credential and hire one another.

They will not be nationalistic or racist. They’ll be patriots for the earth. Their success is the above, and our only real success is theirs.

American Generations