Like the warm weather we’ve had the past two days? Lots of people–including my 11 year old M.– think it’s just dandy or don’t give it a second thought. “Yay! No jackets!”
But not C.
For the past few years I’ve dreaded these unseasonably warm days. These are the days that my highly perceptive, highly sensitive child gets worried. Get’s grumpy. It’s those overexcitabilities. It’s that existential angst.
These are the days when I hear: “It’s not supposed to be this warm.” “Why is it this warm?” “It’s not right… it should be cold.” “Look the trees even have buds!” “Is it going to get cold again?” “I want it to be coooold.” “Will it ever snow again, mom? Will it?” “Can you promise me?”
I try rationality: “Well, I don’t control the weather, I can’t really promise.” That’s not seen as helpful and just brings greater insistence. I try logic. We look at the Post‘s weather tables. “Look,” I’ll say, “On this day in 1934 it was 68 degrees! And it was 16 degrees in 1972! There have always been wide variations.” I share stories of freak March–and even April–snowstorms. I point out that we do live in the mid-Atlantic region after all.
You see, it’s global warming. Ever since the family went to one of Mike Tidwell’s open houses and he screened a short film about global climate change, C. has been completely freaked out.
There’s nothing sadder than being asked by your child, “Mom, will there be a world when I grow up?”
I don’t doubt that global climate change is occurring. However I’ve tried talking to her about the things people are doing–our family is doing–to make a difference. That good people (like Mike) care and are working hard to make meaningful changes. I would love to see her get engaged in the issue. Volunteer with an NGO. Start her own. But to no avail.
She actually asked to be taken home when she learned that An Inconvenient Truth was being screened at her religious education class. She won’t read news stories about global climate change. She’ll turn off NPR when the state of the Antarctic ice shelf is discussed. I’ve spoken to another mom with a daughter the same age, and she reported a similar level concern. Except her daughter wrote gloomy poetry.
So here’s to a good snow storm. Soon.
[...] I’ve talked about the issue of teaching climate change in schools recently, and yesterday I came across a blog that illustrates my concern at The “More” Child. [...]
Good for C., for caring.
And when I was young, it hurt to hear news like this, it felt too awful, I had to avoid it; I’m guessing she feels the same way.
I’m trying to think, given – and respecting – that, what she could do – since we all need to work at “pushing on the iceberg” to change its course. For her sake, but also for her daughter’s sake.
One possibility might be to do what John Doerr’s daughter did – contact someone of the previous generation who’s in a position to make a difference, and say, “Hey! you broke it, it’s your responsibility to fix it – don’t pawn the problem off on me.”
Her words made a difference. Yours can too.
Plus it’s good for you as well – turn the depression into anger, into action.
Maybe do it as a video and put it up on YouTube?
C., as someone from the next generation, your words on this carry a lot of moral weight. Far more so than your mom’s or mine. You want to see adults cringe, this is how you can do it…
:-}
and if you run into any global-warming-denying ostriches, you can send them to skepticalscience.com.
now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go push on that iceberg.
For C. -
Something else you might be able to do – and in terms of value, for the task at hand, this would be priceless – is to take a step back and do some introspection.
What would motivate someone like you to get involved, to join us in pushing on the iceberg?
Because if you can figure that out, and share it, you won’t just be adding one pair of arms to the effort – more like hundreds or thousands.
You might want to have her look at some of the areas where there has been tremendous progress in cleaning up the environment- things like air and water quality. I can remember being shocked at seeing just how polluted the local river was as recently as the 1960′s.
A good book for her to read for is “The Skeptical Environmentalist” by Bjorn Lomberg. He’s got a new book out specifically about global warming, but I haven’t read it yet.
The political scientist Bjorn Lomborg has a wide following. His knack is for projecting concern while dismissing the work of real scientists. Senator Inhopf appreciates that sort of distraction and loves to quote him.
Someone in Denmark has summarized the inherent mistakes typical of Bjorn’s Baloney -
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
The zoo in Chicago has a children’s building/interpretive center (this is the suburban zoo, not the one on the lakeshore). Standard zoo stuff, except what struck me was that they had to post signs for parents that explained why they don’t talk about species going extinct, or global warming, or other cataclysmic-sounding problems in that building. The parent-targeted educational pieces pointed instead to data that show exactly the response of the girls cited above.
The zoo’s strategy instead, especially with the younger kids, is to first teach them to care about animals/environment/ecology by showing them the wonderfulness of it all (and I don’t mean that sarcastically). Because if kids–and I’m sure this is more profound for some temperaments than others–instead have the heavy weight of doom, impending pain and nonrefundable losses thrust on them, they cannot start to chip away at the immense problems by rationalizing small steps the way an adult *might* be able to (ie, pushing the iceberg). It is just too big, too complex, and too unfair seeming. Especially for kids for whom a science project is itself too big to tackle fully independently…well, these kids who both feel in a big way and see the big picture have a very hard time, and they have to shut out the entire issue because it’s just too overwhelmingly sad and daunting.
[Anyone still doubt the important of teaching teachers to recognize and develop work-arounds for asynchronous development?]