I would be classed as being a part of “the youth of today” and I can in all honestly say I don’t believe that we are ready to handle tomorrow’s challenges, not unless we can change our current ways of thinking. But before anyone can say that it’s because our lives are so easy or that we’re too dependant on one thing or another, what about the youth of 20 or so years ago? It’s obvious that they weren’t prepared to deal with the challenges that they were going to face, look at how the global recession is being handled. Economists saw this coming a long time ago but the world’s governments chose to ignore this. In the case of Ireland, the government continued to dwindle the taxpayers money away on nothing and isn’t it any wonder that it was the first country to officially undergo a recession. I have no doubt the governments that my generation will have in 20 or so years time will also have to try to clean up their own messes too.

Humanity always had issues learning from it’s past mistakes. Look at the nuclear weapons used in World War Two. Thousands of lives were erased off the face of the Earth instantly. Then, around 40 years later in Chernobyl there was a nuclear disaster which had negative affects all the way across Europe. Still today nuclear energy is being produced near largely populated areas which are prime targets for terrorists. If you look at global warming, it took us so long for it to dawn on us that our burning of fossil fuels were having such an adverse affect on out planet, and yet we still burn them? I personally feel we were only meant to use what nature provides for us like solar, wind and tidal energy. All these have been around long before humans made their mark on the planet, and I’ve no doubt they’ll be around long after we’ve all gone.

As my generation grows up, we will have new challenges to deal with, some expected, and some not so expected. We need to learn how to prevent whats expected as much as possible. As for whats unexpected, we need to be able to learn how to handle what we don’t fully understand yet but investing in its study and research. Science and understanding will no doubt hold the solution, but it is about humanities willingness to accept we must do something about it even if it means we’re temporarily inconvenienced. Humanity however will never be prepared for everything that tries to hit but maybe we can at least learn to control things before they get worse instead of waiting for it to crumble like what has happened in previous situations.