There's an article published on Market Watch today detailing how Americans in their late 20s, reacting to news that their retirement funds aren't rapidly expanding, are blaming climate change for their modest bank statements.
Here's the logic they're using: since the world won't exist in a 20 or 30 years, why bother investing?! If climate change will kill us all, it's not worth the time to save for retirement.
Mental-health issues affecting young adults and adolescents in the U.S. have increased significantly in the past decade, a study published in March in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found. The number of individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 reporting symptoms of major depression increased 52% from 2005 to 2017, while older adults did not experience any increase in psychological stress at this time, and some age groups even saw decreases. Study author Jean Twenge says this may be attributed to the increased use of digital media, which has changed modes of interaction enough to impact social lives and communication. Millennials are also said to suffer from “eco-anxiety,” according to a 2018 report from the American Psychological Association, with 72% saying their emotional well-being is affected by the inevitability of climate change, compared with just 57% of people over the age of 45.
Word of the day - "eco-anxiety"!
If "eco-anxiety" is a real thing, that means there's a consequence for all the silly rhetoric spewed by alarmists like Al Gore & Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when they tell their supporters we have 12 years left to save Earth or everyone will die.
High-ranking politicians and top-tier thought leaders have told us the sky is falling, so people are investing accordingly.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of millennials — defined by Pew as the generation born between 1981 and 1996 — have nothing saved for retirement, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security. The millennials who are saving had an average balance of $25,500 and were contributing 7.3% of their paychecks as of the second quarter of 2018, figures from Fidelity showed. While most millennials say they are not saving because they simply can’t afford to, for others it’s about the feeling that they may not have a future to save for, says Matt Fellowes, chief executive officer of United Income, an online retirement investment platform based in Washington, D.C.
Sure, that makes sense - why bother saving if we're all gonna die?! There's just one problem with that theory: climate alarmists have been telling us since as the 1970s that we have to reduce carbon emissions or we'll destroy Earth. Instead of decreasing our carbon emissions we doubled them and we also found new ways to combat problems like pollution and extreme weather. The climate alarmists were wrong. They drastically exaggerated what was happening and, in doing so, they drastically mislead us with their advice.
Even still, people listened to Gore and AOC and now they're spending their savings instead of preparing for life down the road.
Great job, AOC! You've doomed your generation to a life of reckless spending and potential poverty because you scared them with bogus junk science.
BONN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 04: Climate change activists gather to march to protest against coal energy and other climate-related issues on November 4, 2017 in Bonn, Germany. The march, organized by over a dozen environmental activist groups, takes place two days before the COP 23 United Nations climate conference due to begin on Monday in Bonn and run through November 16. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)