The future feels bleak for Gen Zs like me. It’s time for a Green New Deal

I’m 23. I was seven when the global financial crisis hit, nine when the Tories began a decade of austerity that gutted schools, youth centres and an NHS which I relied on more than most as someone living with diplegic cerebral palsy. These cuts were deeply challenging for disabled people like me. For my generation, cuts, chronic underinvestment and skyrocketing inequality has been our constant. 

The result? A sicker population, a raging mental health crisis and hollowed-out communities. It’s no surprise our economic outlook today is so bleak, with many young graduates like me trying desperately for months to find jobs whose wages often do not keep up with the cost of food, rent and bills. And that’s after an education deeply disrupted by the pandemic.

Then there is the climate crisis. Governments haven’t just failed to take bold enough action to stop climate catastrophe, they’ve poured oil on the flames: approving fossil fuel projects, cutting subsidies for green energy and cracking down on peaceful environmental activists, while water company and fossil fuel CEOs receive record bonuses, hike our bills and pollute our air and water.

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For many my age, the future feels bleak. The climate crisis isn’t an abstract fear, it has materialised in my community in County Durham, through floods which overtopped bridges and flooded roads, leaving my grandma’s rural community virtually inaccessible. Growing up with a disability, I received the very benefits which this government is pledging to slash.

This government promised us change. It’s why millions of young people voted for them. For those voters, there was genuine hope that years of underinvestment, cuts, falling living standards and an unchecked climate crisis would be at an end.

But with a reform of the planning system that makes huge expansion of Gatwick, Luton and Heathrow airports look likely, the possible approval of the Rosebank oilfield, the gutting of the welfare system, a refusal to tax the booming fortunes of the super-rich and Nigel Farage back on our TV screens it feels like a worsening re-run of what didn’t work before.

Many of us feel like life just keeps getting harder. But there is another way. I’m part of a movement of young people calling for a Green New Deal – a huge programme of public investment to reverse inequality and stop the climate crisis, while making our lives cheaper and building back up our communities. 

Taking wealth back from the super-rich and investing it in schools, hospitals and community centres via a wealth tax. Taking profiteering, bill-hiking industries like energy and water back into public hands. Capping rents. And making historic investment in millions of secure, well-paid jobs in green energy, home insulation, nature restoration and all the other areas needed to solve the climate and nature crises.

If this government’s dire poll ratings and Reform’s surge tell us anything, it’s that hunger for meaningful change, in politics and beyond, has never been stronger.

If you believe in a future where we can all thrive, join Green New Deal Rising and help us get there.

Tamara Ullyart is a member of Green New Deal Rising.

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