It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself.

Sometimes I wonder if we human beings even count as being intelligent. Sure we can build skyscrapers, pilot aircraft, create beautiful symphonies, and send spacecraft to distant planets. But as a species we might just prove in the decades and centuries to come, that for all our smarts and technology, we can’t collectively sort our interests and fend off an existential threat.

Human intelligence, mighty as it may be, will prove no match for human nature.

Do you ever pause to wonder why of all the demographics, young people are the most concerned about climate change? Maybe it’s because they’re more idealistic. Or maybe everyone’s acting in their own interests. Older people, politicians, businesses, and lobby groups, with skin in the fossil fuel game, don’t worry too much about climate change because chances are it’s not going to dramatically affect their lives. They’ll be dead.

Young people do worry. They seriously worry. Because they know full well they’ll still be here to deal with the shitstorm around the corner.

A few weeks back we interviewed two of the Kiwi organisers of the upcoming School Strike for Climate Change action. Raven Maeder and Sophie Handford were articulate, intelligent, informed young women. The sort of people who give you a little sliver of hope that maybe destruction and mayhem isn’t inevitable after all.

These women put together a much more coherent argument than any of those I’ve heard against the School Strike.

So students will be out of school for a few hours? So they’ll inconvenience their parents and maybe even irritate their teachers? Last I checked, inconvenience is the whole idea.

Ask yourself this: is there not an irony that those of us from a generation that for so long thumbed its nose at overwhelming scientific evidence, should have the nerve to waggle our fingers and tsk tsk students for missing a few hours of education. 

I actually had a teacher friend message me the other day – I won’t mention his name – to ask for more information on the school strike so he could share it with his students. 

Maybe I’m old fashioned but if a Rugby World Cup or America's Cup victory parade, or a family holiday are good enough reasons to miss school, then surely impending global doom and a legitimate threat to the state of life on our planet is good for a few hours as well.

Remember that huge national protest in the U.S last year, that students from that Parkland High School organised after their school was shot up by a gunman? I’m sure they learnt more from that action than in a year of social studies classes. 

So if you have a school student who wants to protest this Friday, you should encourage them. I’m not talking about letting them wag school down and hang out at the dairy.  Challenge them to be informed, organised, to attend the protest, to see what they can achieve.

For what it's worth, sadly, I don’t think they’ll achieve much. Well... not much yet, anyway. Not immediately. Not directly. But that in itself is a valuable lesson. I hope at the very least, leading a protest, striking for a few hours might end up ranking as a significant moment in our young people’s loves. Every young person passionate and concerned enough to attend a protest, and to paint a banner or a sign, will in years to come live their lives, protest, and vote with the same concern.

We, the generations that have lived in self interest, we who are set to leave the World in a worse state than we found it, should always have the backs of those who are trying to clean up our mess.