How to educate/prepare kids for climate change

[OneGrassRoot]

Seeing the dire daily news, like many of you I worry for the children. I wondered if there were any resources to start the process of educating and preparing them for their inevitable future of challenges we may or may not face ourselves. It's a shame survivalist has come to equate with "prepper" and thus militia wannabe types because there are valuable survival skills we all could benefit from.

I'm going to start a library for my 4 y/o grandson re: climate change and gather interactive sites and helpful, engaging videos. EDIT TO ADD: Obviously, the older the kids, the more resources there likely are out there. I was searching for something for young children.



A quick Google search turned up quite a few interesting resources and I thought I'd share:

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/04/how-to-prepare-kids-for-climate-change/


The Yale link mentioned NASA's site for kids which has a lot of activities and looks rather awesome:

https://climatekids.nasa.gov/


There are several great links referenced in the Yale article:

https://psychology.org.au/getmedia/825eba10-9020-48d5-bf4c-44b0da388d52/raising-children-to-thrive-in-a-climate-changed-world-18092018.pdf


Recommended reading list:

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/08/childrens-books-about-climate-change/

More: https://time.com/6216169/climate-change-books-for-kids/



https://mashable.com/article/climate-change-talking-to-kids

[Hortensis]

1. Talk about what humanity is doing about it, to offset some of the deluge

of bad news and dystopian doomerism they're being flooded with.

Tell them, for instance, about green hydrogen. There's a post about it right now in the environment forum.

Yet another sustainable energy source that's real but has been mostly on paper, initially high production costs and lack of infrastructure leaving it there. But it's happening now as we under Democratic leadership and many other nations are investing in it and industry's on board.

Hydrogen is carbon-free if produced with renewable energy, and some experts see it as the key to decarbonizing certain ​“difficult-to-abate” industries. As of now, the fuel exists more in clean-energy models than in the real world, as almost all hydrogen is currently made with fossil gas.

But now we may be at the dawning of the green-hydrogen economy, as tens of billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act incentives encourage both startups and established companies to invest in driving down the cost of generating the carbon-free fuel. ... The clean-hydrogen production tax credit in the IRA is ​“incredibly rich,... It’s definitely going to change the landscape of hydrogen.”

https://www.google.com/search?q=dispatch+from+dawn+of+green+hydrogen+era&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1064US1065&oq=dispatch+from+dawn+of+green+hydrogen+era&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61.6697j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1

[OneGrassRoot]

2. Thanks! n/t

[Hortensis]

4. Thank you! I mentioned elsewhere that

I tried to nudge my 3 young grandsons toward the many fields springing up to save the planet. No takers so far but at least making them aware that that's happening. They'll run into it in college.

[Hugin]

5. +1

Emphasis on the fact that there are alternatives is important.

[mahina]

11. I think this is the link you want?

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/hydrogen/a-dispatch-from-the-dawn-of-the-green-hydrogen-era#:~:text=Canary%20gets%20a%20firsthand%20look,subsidies%20for%20fossil%2Dfree%20hydrogen.

[Hortensis]

12. Expect so. Thanks for the link. Didn't realize I'd goofed.

[mahina]

13. You didn't, just not sure you wanted to post the google search or the article.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

14. Problem is dystopian doomerism is reality, at least globally

Here in PA, we sit on top of the 3rd largest nat gas reserve in the world, so blue/green hydrogen is very much a reality in the future. Problem is the rest of the world pumping out 85% of the gasses driving the problem that won't slow down. The glaciers are all but done for by any measure (Daily Kos is a great resource)
Oil is responsible for the energy needed for 7 billion people out of the 8 billion on earth to exist. No oil, 7 billion people are going to have it really rough...

[brer cat]

3. Thank you for the post!

It's hard to know how to discuss climate change with young children without scaring them to death. I've bookmarked this thread to read your links when I have more time.

[mahina]

6. This is great, thank you.

Directly relevant, but I can’t miss a chance to add Peter Fiekowsi’s interview, Safe Harbor for the Climate (New Dimensions 2022)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-dimensions/id1143756294?i=100058722464

[mahina]

7. Might you have another link for the Psychology.org article?

When I click it, it says it was removed. I really appreciate this work. Thank you.

[OneGrassRoot]

9. Sorry about that (learned something)...

I put the title of the article in bold within the link so people wouldn't have to click blindly. Turns out that invalidated the links. lol

All should be well now!

[mahina]

10. Thanks heaps!

I didn't know that either.

[NickB79]

8. My 13 yr old daughter has been helping me vegetable garden and plant fruit trees for years now

Next spring I'll be showing her how to graft fruit trees onto seedling rootstocks and top graft onto older trees; I already do so with apples, plums and pears.

Similarly, she's helping me plant pollinator gardens and a prairie restoration, because she knows how important beneficial insects are to a reliable food supply. No pollinators, no fruit, not as many vegetables.

I have her help with cooking in the kitchen, so she can see how to actually use the vegetables. She's watched me can for years now; this year she'll be hands on making salsas, tomato sauce, pizza sauce, etc. She learned how to make pizza from scratch in school last year, so now she loves making it herself at home.

We have extra baby chicks because I let a couple of hens sit on eggs, as a few of my oldest hens didn't make it through the winter and I need to replace them with young heirloom layers. Normally I just sell the extra chicks for a couple bucks each on Craigslist because it's not worth the feed costs to raise them to butchering size. But this year, she's going to learn how to kill, pluck, gut and process a chicken.

And in October we're going hunting again. Last year she got a squirrel, but no rabbits or deer, because it was public land (read: overcrowded with noisy idiots). This year we're going to hunt farmland my uncles own, so it will be just us and a few of my nieces and nephews. Hopefully she can learn how to gut a deer, so long as someone in the hunting party gets a shot.

She's well aware of the climate catastrophe heading our way; I don't talk much about it around her, but she is a voracious reader of the news just like me. She knows to never move to the coast, the Southwest or the Southeast. She and her friends are talking about moving to Canada or Ireland, which strikes me as a little silly, as we already live in Minnesota.

My goal is to get our piece of land as prepared as possible by the time she's an adult, and teach her the hands-on skills to keep it operational long after I'm gone. Solar panels, new windows, insulation, new roof, air source heat pump, wood-burning stove, a couple acres of fruit trees, wildlife habitat, gardens, native prairie, a small pond, chickens, maybe add rabbits or goats, etc. If things go sideways, I want her and whatever family she has in 20 years to always have a refuge here.