Tim Flannery On How Difficult It's Becoming To Speak To Young People On Climate; Even To His Kids
Being a bearer of bad news is never easy. I’ve been writing and talking about climate change for decades now. Constant exposure hardens one to even the most horrific reality, and I’ve coped by acting like a jolly hangman – or at least not giving in publicly to the helplessness I sometimes feel as I relate the latest findings. But as the news darkens, I’m having difficulty talking to young people about it. I can tell an optimistic story about developing technologies and the role they can play in helping avert the worst of the crisis. But we have now left action so late that some very severe climate impacts seem unavoidable. When I try to imagine how I, as a young person, would react to such news, I find it hard to continue my work.
The group of emerging leaders I spoke to included a young executive from the fossil fuel industry. During the discussion that followed, he commented that most of the younger people in his industry, himself included, felt as I did about the emerging climate crisis. But while some have left to establish renewable energy companies, many more have stayed on, regardless of their personal feelings. Changing one’s career, especially if you’ve been successful, is not easy. Perhaps those who remain fear that they will plunge their families into poverty if they try to re-skill and seek work elsewhere.
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The reaction of very young children to the climate crisis is of even greater concern. What I didn’t realise, on the morning of that Zoom call, was that my youngest child, aged seven, had not been asleep as I thought, but had been listening to the entire presentation. That realisation brought me up sharp. My son is a bright boy, interested in science and space, so I’m pretty sure he understood what I said. And I’m sure that the emotionally fraught discussion he witnessed had an impact on him. But how, now, am I to talk to him about our future?
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/04/we-need-to-talk-to-our-kids-about-the-climate-crisis-but-courage-fails-me-when-i-look-at-my-son
