Save the children

Stop dwelling on the climate change nightmare and dream about change 12

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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Growing up scared. Photo: iStockphoto

When I was a child in the 1950s, I went about my business with a little cloud hanging over my head. It didn't matter whether I was playing in the backyard, studying in my bedroom or suffering from my first romantic crush (Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club). The cloud was always there.

It was the fear of nuclear war. We lived in suburbs west of Chicago. All day long, jets flew overhead on their way to O'Hare International Airport, sometimes so high that they were just a silver spot gleaming in the sun as they moved across the sky. When I saw one, I stopped what I was doing and waited several minutes to see if a mushroom cloud appeared to the east over Chicago. Once I saw the mushroom, I knew from school, our neighborhood would be flattened a few seconds later.

It never happened, of course. I can't say that the cloud ruined my childhood or followed me into adulthood, but its shadow came back to mind Friday night (Oct. 19) as I watched John Stossel's latest "Give Me a Break" segment on ABC.

Stossel took on global warming again. He acknowledged that is real, but questioned whether it's a crisis, whether it's our fault, whether the polar bears actually are at risk and whether we should care. "Who's to say that yesterday's temperature is the perfect one?" he asked.

What I found most disturbing was his interview with a room full of small children, who spoke about people drowning and dying because of climate change. Stossel didn't ask the very important follow-up question: "Hey, kids, what should we do about it?" The answers might have ended the interview on a constructive note and spoiled Stossel's implication that talking about climate change is child abuse.

But there is a legitimate point to be made here. Is the public discussion of global warming leaving many of us -- not just children -- with feelings of despair and helplessness?

The "climate blues" is recognized internationally as one of the public health problems associated with global warming. In 1993, a study for the United Nations Environmental Program reported that the psychological stresses of climate change may "lead to dysfunctional responses":

When people experience a widespread problem that they feel unable to do anything about, they often develop some sort of psychological defense. A problem as overwhelming as climate change is likely to generate such counterproductive responses as cynicism, denial, and aggression. When people respond to a desperate situation by becoming cynical, they lose their interest in the problem and withdraw from activities that might help to alleviate or solve it. When they deny that the problem exists, they deny having any responsibility for causing it; as a result, campaigns that, for example, encourage people to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by driving their cars less would fall on deaf ears. Finally, if people try to vent their frustration through aggression, they may become destructive and seek to sabotage efforts to combat climate change.

The Washington Post reports that these stresses may be particularly difficult for the young:

For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today. Fears of an environmental crisis are defining their generation in ways that the Depression, World War II, Vietnam and the Cold War's lingering "War Games" etched souls in the 20th Century.

Parents says they're searching for productive outlets for their 8-year-olds' obsessions with dying polar bears ... Psychologists say they're seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon.

How we discuss global warming with one another, with the public and with our children in ways that mobilize us for action rather than immobilize us from despair? The answer may lie in advice from Susan Joy Hassol, one of the nation's primier climate communicators: "We need to stop being Chicken Little and start being The Little Engine That Could."

Back in the 1950s, the danger of nuclear war was completely beyond our control. We could learn to duck and cover, or dig a hold in the ground and stock it with canned goods, but our fate was sealed in a black box that moved around with the president of the United States.

Climate change is different. Each of us has a measure of power for change, from voting for the right person to screwing in a compact fluorescent bulb. If we are not helpless, we do not need to feel hopeless.

As Stossel acknowledges, most Americans now accept the science and seriousness of global warming. It's time to move the national discussion beyond the disaster that confronts us if we don't act, to the excellent world that awaits us if we do.

Next time you're talking to a child about climate change, tell him or her we're building a world where the air is cleaner; people are healthier; there are no more oil wars; we have forests in our cities; our buildings are more beautiful; we have lots of ways to move around; we're free from energy crises; and people and ecosystems have learned to live together.

We all know the nightmare. Now we need a dream.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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  1. Erik Hoffner's avatar

    Erik Hoffner Posted 3:09 am
    25 Oct 2007

    kidsTrue all. I recall that cloud well, Joe.
    This is one of the reasons the momentum of the "no child left inside" movement is so key right now:
    http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2 ...
    ...kids won't care about/make informed choices about climate impacts unless they've first connected to their local outdoors.
    And meanwhile, devleoping the positive vision for a greener future is critical: the Van Jones sort of vision that he and others are articulating so well right now. Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx, too: http://www.ssbx.org/mission.html
    Erik

    The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

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  2. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 3:10 am
    25 Oct 2007

    The correct link......to Presidential Climate Action Project".

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  3. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 3:16 am
    25 Oct 2007

    Then Stop Scaring the Kids!!!

    Do you want the nightmares to go away?
    Then how about stopping the exaggerated IPCC comments from getting to kids about 80 foot sea rises when this science is barely understood!!!

    John Bailo


    Sutext:

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  4. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 3:36 am
    25 Oct 2007

    The Right will keep this up......because there is a disconnect between the enormity of the global warming problem, and the solutions, most of which only deal with a portion of the way to an emission-free world.  Until the enviro/policy leaders start talking about what a fossil-fuel-free world looks like, not just what a 20%-reduced fossil-fuel world looks like, the Right will exploit the problem of painting a nightmare without giving a solution.
    I think people are scared of scaring away people by painting the picture of a fossil-fuel-free world, but without that picture, people will just be scared, period.

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  5. Steve Bloom Posted 3:50 am
    25 Oct 2007

    Not nearly frightened enoughI had been aware of the pieces of this particular puzzle, but hadn't seen them put together quite like this.
    FYI, Bailo, our understanding of the mechanisms for sea level rise is quite good.  It's indisputable that business as usual emissions over the course of this century will commit both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to collapse.  It's the details and timing that are still in question.  I had thought that the models for ice sheet disintegration needed a lot more work, but per a brief conversation I had the other day with a modeler at NSIDC, that's not the case.  What's mainly lacking at this point is a detailed deep radar mapping of the underlying topography of the ice sheets.  That's underway, however, and within a few years we should start seeing results.      

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  6. bmoninna Posted 3:51 am
    25 Oct 2007

    We need to give them a reason......to work for change.  It's called a pedagogy of place.  Connect what you're learning to where you live.  Not something far off and hard to imagine, like the polar ice caps.  But your very own back yard.  "The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place" by David Gruenwald, published in the Educational Researcher, is a good place to start if you're interested.

    brig

    "The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure!" - Into The Woods

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  7. Max Weintraub Posted 4:29 am
    25 Oct 2007

    Solutions tough when acknowledgment absentRight on...but, just like an alcoholic in denial, we are still having difficulty acknowledging the problem.  Just two days ago draft language about the health impacts of climate change upon children (and other populations) was cut from testimony to the U.S. Senate given by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    See page 7...

    http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents ...

    Max Weintraub is the director of the Environmental Justice & Health Union

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  8. ids's avatar

    ids Posted 11:30 am
    25 Oct 2007

    Right again about the futureAmerican kids want to be winners like their grand/parents, the boomers who grew with the Bomb drama.  MAD was the center for American progress for boomers, switch duck-and-cover to capture-and-sequester, tell the kids it'll be o.k., we'll switch from oil to corn, since it is all ours to begin with like the coal.  Don't upset the children, they might lash back, and God forbid, don't upset the Corp.'s, they may crush US.  

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  9. PolluteLessDotCom Posted 4:42 am
    26 Oct 2007

    The kids I have metFolks, I teach. Grades 6-12. The kids see the problem and they are worried. They also see that if radical change is needed very little is happening. Depending on their age, they have learned the lessons from their parents and grand-parents and will not veer far away from what they have learned as to be acceptable.
    Nevertheless, most of them see that something needs to happen and that most likely it is them who will bring the change (since it is so obvious that anyone older than 14 isn't doing much). Unfortunately, concern for the environment has become a marketing tool and more and more items are marketed and sold  with some sort of "green" benefit. For kids it is difficult to see behind the facade. They trust that if it says low fat it is low fat, just like environmentally friendly must mean that it actually is good for the environment.  
    The kids do not need to be made scared. They need to be educated to make good decisions, to learn how to live well without damaging the environment, and become critical thinkers. The data is all there. What they are not aware of is that "green" has become a fashion and that the issue is VERY COMPLICATED since almost anything we do in North America has a negative impact on our future situation. There are no easy and simple solutions and old habits have to be broken. Kids have to learn that they will need to do it themselves rather than follow their parent's attitudes or believe that corporations will put concerns for the environment before immediate company profits.
    Offer them good solutions and they will try. They are the biggest optimists on the planet.
    Karsten

    http://www.polluteless.com

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  10. dbaker Posted 2:08 pm
    26 Oct 2007

    dream about change

    Human Excrement + Nuclear Waste = Hydrogen
    dream on that for a while and then contact me
    Dennis Baker

    because I think what you are doing is very essential for the survival of the planet, and anybody who is hindering that needs to be pushed aside.

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  11. Tom Athanasiou's avatar

    Tom Athanasiou Posted 3:51 pm
    28 Oct 2007

    I tried it on my sonLast week I got a call from a journalist who was doing an article on the anxiety and depression problems that she was having because of the climate crisis.  After talking for a while, we agreed that the real reason she was so depressed is that she felt powerless.  In other words, she'd already gotten the memo about building a better future, but was obsessing on the fact that other people (she kept talking about SUVs and styrofoam) seemed to her to be determined to avert their eyes for as long as possible.  
    That is to say, it was the everyday denialists surrounding her, as much as the crisis itself, that were freaking her out.  
    I filed this as interesting, but it didn't really sink in until a few days later, when I was talking to my 11 year old son.  Climate came up, as it often does around our house.  I gave him a mixed but optimistic rap, focusing on the positive, "we can make a better world: angle.  And he replied in words quite like the journo's.  In effect: "Yeah, sure dad, but most people don't want to change, so what makes you think it's going to happen?"
    Stopped me in my tracks a bit.

    Tom Athanasiou

    (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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  12. caniscandida Posted 4:43 pm
    28 Oct 2007

    confusion tooYes, Tom, the outlook, itself depressing enough, is made worse by the denialists, and by the spectacle of all those clueless inactives who know nothing and do nothing.
    But on top of that, as though that were not bad enough, there are confusing mixed messages.  Note this cheery report (or is it not supposed to be cheery?) on how things are looking up for horticulture in southern Greenland, the land of melting glaciers, and not all that far from the about-to-drown-or-starve polar bears:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/world/europe/28greenlan ...

    Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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