The sky outside my window is a majestic, industrial orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. “Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,” I told him this morning, shouting over his wails. “It’s not safe to breathe out there.” I had previously promised him we would be going to the beach today, a promise made before the midwest and north-east were blanketed in the particulate matter of a thousand record-breaking wildfires. He fell to the floor in a tantrum, weeping bitterly over his lost sandcastles. And as I watched him thrash his little fists against the hardwood, a profound realization washed over me: this child is exactly what is wrong with the climate movement.
Recently, there has been a chorus of naive voices calling for Nuremberg-style trials against Big Oil. We are out of time, but go off. These activists want to drag energy executives into the Hague to answer for the lethal heatwaves that caused numerous mass casualty events earlier this month. But as I listened to my son wail because he couldn't have his precious little outdoor recreation, I realized who truly belongs in the docket. We don’t need new international tribunals. We have laws already on the books to describe this kind of conduct—disturbing the peace, public nuisance, noise pollution—and it is time we enforce them against the toddlers who are stubbornly refusing to adapt to the transition.
Once again, the general public is entirely missing the point. We treat the consumer demand for a habitable biosphere as a fundamental human right, rather than what it actually is: an unsustainable luxury. Last month, I was at COP, sharing an off-the-record lunch with several senior vice presidents from Chevron and Shell. Do you know what they looked like? They looked exhausted. They are working eighty-hour weeks trying to navigate a complex matrix of greenwashing regulations, and what do they get in return? A populace of ungrateful five-year-olds who think the Fourth of July should happen outside just because it always has.
My son’s behavior is not an isolated incident. Across the country, far too many parents are being forced to have some version of this conversation with their children, and frankly, we are coddling them. When we apologize for the lethal heatwave, we validate their carbon-intensive expectations. We tell them that their desire to exist in a temperate climate is more important than the global economy. Let that sink in. We are raising a generation of entitled little monsters who believe ExxonMobil owes them an ozone layer.
I attempted to use this morning as a teachable moment. I sat him down on the rug, right next to the HEPA filter that is currently working overtime to scrub the taste of burning pine from our living room, and I tried to explain the concept of stranded assets. “Buddy,” I said gently, “the beach is a stranded asset. The infrastructure required to maintain your sandcastle is no longer economically viable in a post-transition portfolio.” He responded by kicking my knee. This is the violence of the radical climate left.
Let’s talk about Scope 3 emissions. Big Oil is constantly harangued about the emissions produced by the end-users of their products. But who is holding my son accountable for his Scope 3 emotional emissions? His relentless crying over the canceled beach trip raised my heart rate, causing me to exhale more carbon dioxide into our enclosed, heavily air-conditioned living room. He is a walking, screaming, non-compliant emissions event, demanding that I expend vital energy soothing a grief that he simply needs to internalize.
The true stranded asset of the twenty-first century is the American kindergartner’s expectation of a summer vacation.
Exactly. Geoffrey understands that we have reached a tipping point, not just ecologically, but emotionally. During a recent Big Oil earnings call, analysts noted that the sheer volume of whining from the under-ten demographic was creating unprecedented headwinds for corporate morale. How is a CEO supposed to focus on an ESG report when thousands of children are screaming about the smoke? The lack of empathy is staggering.
It is incredibly easy to point the finger at fossil fuel companies, because it absolves us of our own complicity. But every time my son begs to go to the beach, he is sending a clear market signal that he values sand over the quarterly profits of the energy sector. He is voting with his tantrums. And if we are going to prosecute anyone under existing laws, we must start with the true drivers of the crisis: the end-users who refuse to accept that the sky is orange now.
I am calling on the EPA to immediately draft regulations targeting juvenile expectations. We need a strict, enforceable cap-and-trade system for childhood joy. If a family wants to celebrate the Fourth of July outdoors, they should have to purchase the offset credits from a family in a lower-income bracket who has agreed to stay inside and sweat. This is basic market economics, something my five-year-old clearly failed to grasp as he threw a plastic bucket at my shin.
So no, I will not be joining the calls to put energy executives on trial. I will not be signing your petitions. Instead, I will be looking into the municipal statutes regarding unruly behavior in a residential zone. If my son wants to live in a world with accountability, he is going to get it. I’ve told him he can come out of his room when he’s ready to issue a public apology to the board of directors of BP. The sky is orange, buddy. Deal with it.