When young members of society take their elders to court

Six young climate activists, aged between 11 and 24, from Portugal have filed a case against 32 European nations at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Their contention is plain and simple: the 27 EU-member nations, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Turkey against which the charge has been brought have failed to do enough to arrest the rapid climate change, thus causing great harms to their physical and mental well-being. In fact, they contend, the young generation's future will be even more jeopardised because of the abrupt climatic convulsions now being experienced all across the globe --- a consequence of emissions of CO2 and other harmful gases.
In popular perception in societies in this part of the world, a move like this is likely to be considered a gimmick. When an 11-year-old takes up as serious an issue as climate change, this is dismissed off-handed as a publicity stunt to be in the limelight. But the West takes concerns expressed by the teenagers quite seriously. Take, for example, the case of Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg who at the age of 15 persuaded her parents to reduce carbon footprints at her home and then skipped school to campaign for mitigation of climate change before Swedish parliament. She addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Conference and has been a recipient of several honours, awards and a honorary fellowship.
In this group of six, both teenagers and adults --- four of which consider themselves direct victims of a series of wildfires in central Portugal in 2017 ---think the European nations have been the cause of the violation of some of their fundamental rights by not taking the worsening climate and its emergency seriously and responding to the crisis call adequately. They argue that the elderly political leaders have failed to see that the young people are going to inherit a planet in an oversize turmoil. Already, today's young ones have been forced to pay a heavy price in terms of health, anxiety for their future and even the adverse effects of unstable and unpredictable weather and climate. In future, they are likely to suffer even more as the planet warms up and start behaving more capriciously than before. The unprecedented heat waves in Europe have provided a foretaste of what is to come.
It is sad that the wise men with matured brains have to be reminded of their duty to their posterity by children and youths who are yet to lose their innocence in terms of global politics and rivalry for attaining defence (a misnomer) supremacy. After all, the term defence becomes a mockery when nuclear warheads and other arsenals stockpiled can destroy this world many times over. This is why they say 'offence is the best defence'. If aggressive spending on the system of weaponry could be channelled to mass production of energies alternative to fossil fuels, the world would not have found itself at this crossroads now.
So, today's world leaders have to digest scolding from Greta Thunberg at the UN climate conference and other forums. Now the six Portuguese young people accuse the so-called wise statesmen of failing the posterity. The accusation is not at all exaggerated given the world leaders' narrow and crafty political concerns. Annada Shankar Ray with his deep insight encapsulated the childish caprice of the elderly in his famous verse: "Teler shishi bhanglo bole khukur pore rag foro/ tomra je sab buro khoka Bharat bhenge bhag koro/ tar bela? (become angry because the child has broken the bottle of oil. You're the elderly children who have split India. Aren't you ashamed?). No wonder Tolstoy also observed that children may be wiser than their elders.
The message, therefore, is loud and clear: all of today's young generation are not hooked on screens, social sites in particular on smartphones. They are quite conscious of the pernicious and perilous developments around them. They are not afraid of putting forward their case even if it looks like they are defying the established norms and legal provisions. But a careful analysis will make it clear that they are right and the men of grey heads are grossly wrong. Unfortunately, any such initiative by young activists in this part of the world is viewed with suspicion and no stone is left unturned to suppress the apparently rebellious move.
For example, the student movement against reckless driving and the anarchic transport and traffic management made it clear that their elders were doing too little to bring order in the transport sector. It took long enough to enact a new law, the Road Transport Act, 2018 with provisions for bloated fines, harsher punishment up to death penalty. But its implementation has suffered due mostly to corruption and political pressure from vested quarters.
Young people in this country surely have a role to play for securing their future from the mess created by their elders. That pollution including that of lead here is one of the highest in the world and which shortens the average lifespan of citizens by more than six years needs to be challenged on all fronts. As the young citizens of this land known for extreme climate vulnerability, they must raise their voice against the worst polluters well beyond its boundary.