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There was the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War, environmental concerns around overpopulation, deforestation and acid rain. And there were dystopian mov

There was the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War, environmental concerns around overpopulation, deforestation and acid rain. And there were dystopian movies like Terminator, Alien and Threads with fears around technology, corporations and world war. Older people did have to deal with the possibility of bad future outcomes. It seems to have been forgotten in the 90s and and the first decade of the 2000s when those issues didn't seem so world ending in the absence of the Cold War and the failure of environmental doom predictions from the 60s though the 80s.

CipherThrowaway 5y ago
My point isn't that older generations didn't have problems worth worrying about. It's that younger generations have their own unique problems worth worrying about. I wouldn't expect someone who grew up in the 00s to really understand the Cold War, so why would I expect someone who grew up in the 80s to understand the unique challenges of Generation Z? This is why dialogue is important. The environmental comparison is very shallow. Climate change is a higher stakes and larger scale environmental issue than we have ever seen and will require radical changes to modern life and modern economies merely to limit the damage. Compare it to a past looming disaster like ozone depletion where the risk was bad sunburns and all we had to do was stop spraying Freon into the air. I remember actually being worried about the ozone layer. Boy does that feel quaint now.