India’s educated young are arguably the most climate-informed generation this country has ever produced. They know the IPCC timelines. They track the AQI. They have shared the glacier reels and felt the dread of a Delhi May that now regularly touches 46 degrees. And they have, for the most part, decided that none of this changes how they live. This is not ignorance. The problem is that the system offers them no meaningful way to act.

The comfortable explanation is hypocrisy: The climate-anxious generation that books flights and buys fast fashion without apparent contradiction. But hypocrisy implies a conscious choice to ignore what one knows. What is actually happening is more depressing: A generation has been given total awareness and almost no power, and has rationally concluded that awareness, by itself, is not a plan.

Consider what the system actually offers a 23-year-old who takes climate seriously. She can carry a tote bag, refuse a straw, or offset her flight, a practice so cosmetically effective and........

© Indian Express