There’s a joke among people I know that it’s wonderful working at universities, until the students turn up! It’s based mainly on the sudden increase in queues at Greggs, coffee shops, and the campus supermarkets, or the disappearance of parking spaces within a mile radius of your office as soon as the end of September comes around and we transform from a tranquil summer oasis into a bustling melting pot of activity.

I may come across on occasion as more than a little grumpy about students and young people in general. But that’s almost certainly just me turning into an old man – mentally and metaphorically if not quite yet physically – rather than a true reflection.

I admit they do baffle me with their preference for Voice Notes over telephone calls (I’m led to believe that one person actually calling another in any event other than world-ending apocalypse can lead to the end of relationships), and with their use of 6-7 and skibidi – both long out of date by the time you read this, and even by the time you first heard of them.

But I was likewise perplexing when I was a student – though then it was due to a strange obsession with Henry Kelly’s adverts for Asahi (never has a man been more worshipped in a student kitchen), and staying up late to watch WWF (now WWE, nothing to do with pandas) pay-per-views.

Each generation is always going to have its own quirks, but what has become clear through talking to many, many people on Transforming Tomorrow is that Gen Z care about the planet and saving it from us Boomers (again, almost certainly an out-of-date term, but thus proving my point about how they confuse me). It’s a big generalisation, I know, but then so is everything anyone ever says about any particular generation, so I’ll stick with it.

Recently, while talking with PhD researcher Camilo Cornejo – himself ridiculously young for someone who knows so much – we found out about a group of students from Pacific nations who set in motion events that led to an advisory opinion being issued from the International Court of Justice, saying climate change was an existential threat, and states must act.

[Photo: F11photo, via Adobe Stock]

Camilo told us how the students got together to let their feelings be known on the unfairness of climate change – through rising sea levels – changing their nations forever, mainly by wiping territory from the map. That group of students found support from around 150 countries, and thus we have the ICJ opinion that states must prevent significant harm to the climate. No small potatoes, and a strong message on the power of civic action, and of the voice of young people.

This echoes, albeit on a far grander scale than we imagined at the time, our discussions with the likes of Stephen Homer, Jose Alcaraz, and Darren Axe, about their work with students in the UK, Germany, Malaysia, and beyond. Each of them extolled the desire of students to learn about the big issues and to act. In one of the first episodes of 2026, you will hear from a team at Dniprotech in Ukraine with a similar positive message on attitudes there. Whether any of our guests would have imagined a ruling such as that from the ICJ coming because of student activism is another matter.

Carys Nelkon and Beth Garrett work with even younger people through the Morecambe Bay Curriculum. When we spoke to them, we found out how teachers and pupils across our region are considering things from a more local perspective, and that sustainability and the environment are key factors there as well.

It all paints a positive picture of young people. Never mind what old people (I may or may not be counting myself here) would have you believe about them!

Of course, youthful enthusiasm and student activism are one thing, business action is another entirely. I daresay there are very few sustainability-driven students who would vote through pay packages such as that recently bestowed on Elon Musk (a man whose name is being mentioned in this blog far too often for my comfort) or agree to banks and other organisations supporting fossil fuel companies as much as they do. But unless they hold shares or hold a very cushy side job on the board of a multinational, they have no say.

We’ve looked at that side as well. When we talked recently to Nick Barter, from Griffith University in Australia (though his accent is still much more ‘Good Morning’ than ‘G’Day’ after almost 15 years Down Under), we discovered how some companies around the world are starting to take this next generation (and the one after that) more seriously in the boardroom.

Through Nick’s research, we could see that businesses are starting to think beyond today’s bottom line when it comes to their operations. They also recognise that they could be doing better – particularly those in Japan, who it seems will never consider themselves as doing a brilliant job at anything, even if they are! More young voices are finding their way into boardrooms to influence decisions, though perhaps not as many as we would like. I know Alfredo De Massis, to whom we will be speaking early in the new year, has found similar changes in family businesses, where younger voices help bring sustainability more to the fore.

Maybe the next generation will be the ones who take the much-needed steps towards saving the planet. Though I will speak up for older people by pointing out that in the same episode Camilo told us about the Pacific nation students, he discussed KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of 40 elder women in Switzerland who challenged Switzerland’s climate strategy. So, maybe the young will have a little help.

This activism and the results we can see make me think it might just make that extra 15 minutes in the queue for a coffee and sausage roll worth it!

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