The young have been obscenely burdened with the responsibility to be a voice of moral authority for their parents and their grandparents. People are looking to a young generation to make the decisions that previous generations have been incapable of making. It’s another form of denialism.

I love Greta Thunberg, I think she’s fucking awesome. I’m so proud of all the kids who are out there fighting the good fight. But the media passing it over to a 7-year-old or a 15-year-old, and using them as the frontline that Trump can then tweet his rants at? It’s diseased. We have to start to reckon with the disease that’s curled around every aspect of our lives in this late stage of capitalism. If we’re not doing that on a daily basis, we’re just lying to ourselves.

You ask, “What can we do?” You can talk to everyone you know about this on a constant basis and try to create consensus about it. You can create groups of people and think tanks to try to counter the billionaire-subsidized think tanks that are forming our current trajectory as a species. If there’s anything you can do, it’s to get profoundly involved. Like, quit your fucking job and do something useful. Hold yourself accountable. It’s painful, I can say that from experience. You’re going to have to sit with your own hypocrisy. And then you have to get real comfortable with people telling you that you’re a killjoy.

Anohni, interviewed