We live in a world where crisis has become the norm. Everyday there seems to be another emergency, another existential threat, or generation defining crisis that permeates our TV screens and newsfeeds. From climate change to genocidal wars in Yemen, it is safe to say that the future seems bleak. 
As the younger generation, it is our duty to not only change the way the world operates but to upend the world altogether. It is clear that the current structures that we operate within are no longer working. The very foundations of our society are unsustainable and staying within our current neoliberal paradigm is no longer an option. 
In a paper written by Emmanuel Kumi, a professor in the School of Agriculture and Policy Development at the University of Cambridge, Kumi details how unsustainable market practices will eventually result in more harm than good. Kumi says adopting a market-led approach to environmental resources have resulted in ‘accumulation by disposition’. 
For example, privatization to a larger extent has failed to provide services to the poor coupled with incidence of corruption in countries in developing countries. In other cases, the private sector has increased the level of environmental pollution for water and solid waste. This has resulted in the contamination of surface water and groundwater and therefore poses environmental and health treats which in the long run affect the attainment of sustainable development.
In addition, Milena Buch and Max Koch, professors of sustainability and social policy wrote a 2017 article detailing how the Earth’s soil, water, and forest functioning along with ecosystem resilience have been depleting at exponentially high rates that have shown no signs of slowing down. 
Buch and Koch also details how poverty levels and wealth inequality are increasing for most of the world in periphery areas like Latin America and Africa which suggests that living conditions and societal wealth gaps are increasing within our current system. 
With all of this in mind, it is difficult for the youth to be satisfied living in such a system for the rest of our lives. The question of how the younger generation can shape the future is difficult to answer in the level of specific action. If you were to ask me which specific policies to pass, which environmental regulations to change, and what the income tax rate on the rich should be, I would be unable to answer. What we can do, however, is learn how to orient ourselves to the world to make as much of a difference as we can. 
I believe that for us to make the most of our time, we need to learn how to think like revolutionaries and not reformists. We should be confident demanding a complete dismantlement of the current system we live in rather than making small tweaks in a broken machine. An example can be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal which was a rejected Congressional bill that attempted to pass radical environmental policies to slash the United State’s emissions. When thinking like a revolutionary, such a policy should not be radical but should be the norm. 
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently came out with a report that unless we reach zero emissions globally, we will reach irreversible environmental tipping points that cement our doom. When faced problems of such existential proportions, our response should be radicality, not slow reform. 
The older generations have failed us with reform and it is about time we respond with radical action.