A Boomer's Confession

I’m a Boomer which means I am personally responsible for all the ills and destruction perpetrated by the human species since the year of my birth. I am also personally responsible for the future collapse of human civilization and the eventual, but inevitable, extinction of the human species, along with billions of other species on planet earth. I have no defense. However, while I have no moral right to comment beyond my confession, I would, nonetheless, say one more thing.

David Wallace-Wells in his book The Uninhabitable Earth (Tim Duggan Books, New York: 2019) points out that the burning of fossil fuels that has led us to our inevitable end pretty much happened in one generation. As he says: “The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime—the planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and a funeral” (page 4). To further drive home his point, he says that historically the “majority of the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld” (page 4). Whoa!

The first episode of Seinfeld premiered on July 5, 1989. So, let’s be generous and address only those of you who were between 15 and 35 years old in 1989. I’m thinking that then and in the years that followed you weren’t living in your yurts heated with solar panels or windmills, eating berries and leaves, petting Bambi while simultaneously hugging a tree and Smokey the Bear. I’m betting you were eating meat, making unethical investments that harmed human beings and the planet, driving gas fueled cars, heating your home with fossil fuels, getting on airplanes, buying products packaged in single use plastic, taking cruises, cutting down Christmas trees, washing yourself and everything else with harmful chemicals, building with concrete, throwing all kinds of shit in the garbage, enjoying your music, movies, antibiotics and your shares in Apple and Amazon, consuming like faithful consumers, using coal, oil, or natural gas powered stoves, ovens, slow cookers, lamps, overhead lights, water heaters, refrigerators, televisions, radios, DVD/Blu-ray/DVR players, laptops, eReaders, desk top computers, cell phones, tablets, coffee machines, kettles, food processors, blenders, MRI scanners, street lamps, public transportation, EKG machines, the Internet, the postal service, riding on escalators and elevators, going to cafés, restaurants, theaters, movies, doctors offices, staying in hotels, going to work…Well, you get the idea. You were living a Boomer’s life.

I understand you had no choice. You had to live in the world. And I’m not trying to hide from my responsibilities. I’ve been told, and so it must be true, that we Boomers are the collective representation of all that has been, is, and will be wrong with our species. It would obviously be heretical for me to deny it. I am simply and humbling suggesting that you might temper your self-righteous “Okay Boomer” just a little—not entirely, but just a little—because most of you were enjoying the ride until Greta came along.

To all of you in Greta’s generations, I’m sincerely sorry. It breaks my Boomer heart, because while we should be dramatically reducing our CO₂ emissions, we are in fact, right now, every minute of every day, increasing them. You have no future. Please don’t have children. It would take a miracle of biblical proportions to save you.

Dale Rominger, born 1948, will die, relatively speaking, soon.

Copyright © 2020 Dale Rominger