At the end of May, The Irish Times released a survey of young people between the ages of 16 and 21 conducted by Young Social Innovators. Sixty percent of those surveyed described their generation as stressed, anxious and depressed, while a mere 11% described it as motivated. With the housing crisis (which currently sees over 10,000 people in homelessness services), precarious work and the constant threat of climate change forever looming over them, it’s not surprising that the majority of young people are not exactly as hopeful about their future as they may once have been.
A generation faced with stress & anxiety
By Heather O’Callaghan
At the end of May, The Irish Times released a survey of young people between the ages of 16 and 21 conducted by Young Social Innovators. Sixty percent of those surveyed described their generation as stressed, anxious and depressed, while a mere 11% described it as motivated. With the housing crisis (which currently sees over 10,000 people in homelessness services), precarious work and the constant threat of climate change forever looming over them, it’s not surprising that the majority of young people are not exactly as hopeful about their future as they may once have been.
For teenagers there is a constant pressure to perform well in school as their entire college career hangs on one exam, which is nothing short of “tell me everything you’ve learnt in 5 years, go!” For young adults there’s the added stress of high college fees and high rent for very limited accommodation which forces many either to live with their parents all through university and for many years afterwards, or not attend the university they received a place in if it’s away from home. As well as this, there is the issue of precarious work, low wages and zero-hour contracts to contend with. Pretty bleak, right?
Comments (1 of 1)
Jump To Comment: 1Pity these brainwashed young kid's energies are being wasted on providing ammunition
for FG's nonsense cynical carbon taxes on the poor and nonsense policies
propping up the auto industry and undermining Irish small agriculture
Meanwhile the EU happily continues it's Mercosur deal which will result
in more of the rain forests being cut down.
Nothing ireland does will influence climate change one bit.
It's money thrown into a pointless quixotic black hole
which will have absolutely no effect on the Irish weather
or the sea levels of the planet.
apart from water vapour which we can do nothing about, all of the greenhouse gases amount to a mere 1% of the atmosphere.
Of that 1% CO2 amounts to 400ppm or 0.04%
That 0.04% is what remains in the atmosphere due to all the emissions of all the countries in the world
plus all the volcanoes, coal seam fires, termite farts, forest fires, etc etc etc.
Mankind's entire contribution to this 400ppm or 0.04% is estimated to be a mere 3.4% of the total after all those other natural sources which we can do little or nothing about are taken into account.
Ireland's contribution to this tiny 3.4% of 0.04% can barely be measured in amongst the noise.
If Ireland suddenly had zero emissions tomorrow the weather would not change one bit here
as people on the streets and especially their kids have been led to believe through relentless repetition
of climate change propaganda. However the carbon taxes will have very real effects indeed on the Irish poor.
The only imperative here is threats of huge fines from the EU.
And for this the poorest in our society will be squeezed,
The EU needs to fund it's excesses and the eye watering salaries and pampering of it's bureaucrats so they constantly need to be devising schemes that allow them to extract fines from the member states to pay for it all.
Climate change is a real money spinner for them.
We never hear where all this fine money goes of course.
And to date the EU has been rather bad in producing credible transparent accounts
for citizens to examine!
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