Diary of a Gen Z Student: Young people aren't going to solve the climate crisis - we can barely cope with paper straws

Jane Cowan is a student in Trinity College Dublin, where she is in her second year, studying English.

Being an environmental warrior is all fun and games until I have to pretend, I’m okay with the rapidly disintegrating paper straw in my iced oat milk latte cappuccino flat white, drizzled with vanilla syrup and the tears of cis white men. 

By the time I’ve taken the obligatory photo of said coffee, that paper straw is but a distant memory. The photo is the only evidence I have that my straw ever actually existed. 

Marketing experts have sold us all on the false promise of paper straws. Look, I love sea turtles as much as the next girl, but don’t lie to me by saying that a paper straw will work just like a plastic one. 

I may be young, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I remember the good old days. The ones when I could rely on my straw to be in working order for more than 3 minutes, after being placed in my drink.

Now, I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I know that a lot of my fellow Gen Z-ers feel the same way. We’re not the devoted environmentalists that everyone makes us out to be. 

Sure, I know a few people who could probably pass some sort of Greta Thunberg test, but they’re definitely in the minority. We only tend to feel very strongly about doing our bit for climate change, when it suits us. 

Yes, we will get the bus to college, but most of us don’t own cars. 

A voyage by bus – as anyone who has ever experienced the joys, odours, and delays of Dublin Bus knows – is only embarked upon out of pure necessity. It’s the bus, or destitution, for me.

And yes, we might also drink oat milk in our coffee, ‘because it produces fewer greenhouse gases that regular milk’. But I think drinking oat milk is a bit like training for a marathon; no one would do it if you couldn’t tell people about it. 

It’s an easy way to subtly signal to others that you have your life in order. To paraphrase: ‘Yes, I’m perfect in every sense of the word. When was the last time you got up at 4am to milk your oats?’ 

We’re also mildly invested in being vegetarian, pescatarian, presbyterian, and vegan. But the best-laid plans of mice and men (and students) often result in chicken nuggets on the way home from the nightclub at 4am. 

A tofu burger is simply not going to cut it after a few hours on the dance floor. Some things can only be remedied by the real deal, the humble chicken nugget. And post night out hunger is one of things.

Then there’s the issue of us wanting to travel as much as possible, as cheaply as possible. The environment is not something we tend to consider when booking flights.

There’s nothing a college student loves more than a cheap Ryanair flight. It doesn’t matter where that flight is headed. At those prices, it’s rude not to take advantage. 

I may not have ever had a desire to explore the Bulgarian countryside, but for a €30 return ticket? I’ll be there. Sign me up. 

You’d have to claw that Ryanair app out of my cold dead hands, to keep me from taking advantage of a bargain like that. 

So, until Ryanair stops teasing us with these bargains, students will keep the airports booked and busy, all year. 

We might be the reason for the delay in airport security, but at those prices, we can’t be held responsible for our actions. That’s on Michael O’Leary, if you ask me.

At this stage, we know it shouldn’t fall on individuals to make up for environmental damage caused by massive corporations. We all know that the notion of an individual’s carbon footprint was invented by these corporations to direct blame away from themselves. 

But the belief that all young people are terribly concerned with the climate crisis, has certainly not been my experience. Sure, when it suits us, we’ll make the odd climate-friendly switch. 

I can be a big girl, drink something with a paper straw. Or skip the straw altogether, at a push. You may even catch me milking some oats. 

But put it like this: if we’re waiting for Gen Z to solve the climate crisis, one tofu burger at a time, we may as well wait for Dublin Bus to run on time while we’re at it.