I found this post over on the Climate Ark blog.
Hello,
My 8-year-old daughter has just come running to me in a flood of tears. Why? Because she thinks the world is going to end sometime soon and it's the fault of me and, to a lesser extent, my generation. That's why. Why does she think that? Because she takes it for gospel that over bearing boffins like yourself know more than ordinary folk like me. Does it make you feel good? Making an eight-year-old girl with a mouth brace bawl her little eyes out?
I really empathized with this father. There's more:
Centuries ago wasn't it scientists who were worshiping the sun as a God? Wasn't it scientists who thought the world was flat? And wasn't it a scientist who invented the nuclear bomb? Hell, before Newton came along not one single scientist could work out what gravity was. I'm a salesman, have been for 20 years. think you union guys are smarter than me, do you?
Listen, I sell to put food on the table. Give me some shit and I'll sell it. If I don't sell I get fired. Simple as that. The pressure is on me every week. Yet, the wife has a direct debit with you scientists at the cancer charity and I'll confess it rankles with me. Everyday you scientists go to work in your white coat sand fiddle about with a few test tubes and at the end of every day, every week and every month you shrug your shoulders and say, "nope, we still ain't found a cure." But you still get paid. That's one tough gig! Win or lose you still get paid a fancy salary, you get to comp those expensive lunches and with your other 'concerned' scientists. My wife pays for that.
Let me tell you something about global warming. We're enjoying unseasonally fine weather. So what if a bit of the North pole drops off? Sounds like a pretty good bargain to me. Besides, in a few thousand years the likelihood is we'll be dead by then so who really gives a crap if the world has fried by then? Besides, we'll be living in apartments in Pluto by then. Luckily I sat my little girl down and articulated this to her and now she's stopped her babbling.
I think you ought to quit you scaremongering tactics and stop frightening the wits out of little girls like my Roxanne.
We all have our limits, and this blue-collar father, an average Joe, has understandably reached his.
I was a little tentative when Aunt Martha volunteered to take my daughter to see An Inconvenient Truth. I was not sure at all it was the kind of film children should see. I let my kids watch Jurassic Park when they were little without a care. I explained to them beforehand that it was pretend and they took their father's word for it. I couldn't say that this time. I pulled my sister-in-law aside as they were going out the door and asked her to watch for signs of anxiety or fear in her niece and to be sure to answer any questions in a most reassuring manner.
My daughter was fine, but she does not want to talk about the film. She has moved it to the back of her mind and I think that is a good thing. My wife does not want to talk about unsettling things like global warming either, and I don't really blame her. We all have different ways of coping with life. They are called coping mechanisms, and you really can't change them. I have an annoying tendency (at least to my wife) to expect the worse and prepare for it. She expects the best and when it doesn't happen, deals with it then. Both methods seem to work, and by joining forces in a marriage, we get a kind of redundancy. Most people out there are never going to face global warming head-on, and we need to accept that.
We should expect an epidemic of anxiety disorders among children if this global warming thing isn't handled properly by parents and teachers. One easy way to deal with it is to tell your kids it is all a bunch of crap and not to worry about it, as the father who wrote that letter did. Myself, I told her that everything will be fine and not to worry about it. We will find better ways to make electricity and fuel our cars, our Prius being a reassuring example. My message was not that different, really, and hopefully not a load of crap.
I was also disappointed by the caustic responses by some environmentalists -- I am guessing those without children, who couldn't empathize with this father's plight.
Seventh Generation launches anti-toxics campaign with wee gimmick
Reactions to Al Gore’s book o’ solutions, “Our Choice”
The must-read solutions book by Al Gore
Comments
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Tod Brilliant Posted 5:51 am
06 Nov 2006
" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar
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David Roberts Posted 6:22 am
06 Nov 2006
Part of that will inevitably include disdain for the old folks who created the problem. And part of it will inevitably include a deep understanding of just how dire the problem is.
But the crucial piece is the sense that they have the smarts, the tools, and the power to turn things around. That's what blue-collar dad should have said to his daughter: "yeah, we screwed things up pretty bad. But you, honey, you're going to fix it. You and your friends are going save the world. Better get started!"
www.grist.org
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Tod Brilliant Posted 6:51 am
06 Nov 2006
I wish we had time to let our kids save the world. It's up to US and we have to do it RIGHT NOW. It is on our shoulders - not to make money or seek to commodify the 'sustainability movement' as too many of us have done, distracting us from our real goal and breaking us into competing camps (whose site has more hits to allow greaterer ad revenue? whose book is shooting up the amazon charts faster?).
Yes, a sense of mission. The mission ABOVE all else. Unity. This is what we need, but I doubt very much we will achieve in time. Proactive unity is nearly impossible . . . we'll unite all right, forced by impending disaster, but it will be too late by then.
" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar
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Roz Cummins Posted 12:53 pm
06 Nov 2006
I spent the next few years (grades 4 - 6) lying awake at night with my eyes wide-open, wondering how we were ever going to pull this off. I really think that the same information could have been communicated to me in a less scary way.
That's why I was shocked when I was hanging out with a friend the other day and she remarked about the very clever apple cutting demonstration she had just seen at her son's school.
To a grown-up, I guess this is old news, just presented in a very visual and easily understood way. But to me at nine years old, it was "new" news, and it was way too dramatic and scary. Even just thinking of the phrase "Three quarters of the world is water..." and picturing a paring knife gives me the creeps.
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bookerly Posted 6:47 pm
06 Nov 2006
Frankly, the article sounds fake. Sounds like something written by some right-wing hack to score points.
They do this sort of stuff you know.
To the father, I'd say, I bet you are less real than global warming.
Really, what hooey.
patrick
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:28 am
07 Nov 2006
It has been suggested that the arms race between human beings, the bullshiter verses the bullshitee, has been a driver of human intelligence. Human beings are masters of deception (including self-deception) and at detecting it.
On the other hand, the question as to whether children should be protected from obsessing over and worrying about terrifying potentials beyond their control is very real, as it is with my daughter, as it was with Roz's example above.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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caniscandida Posted 4:56 am
07 Nov 2006
Frankly, though, as a teacher who have taught all age groups from seventh grade to senior citizen, and am myself childless, I have spent a lot of time morally wringing my hands, over whether I exposed the younger ones to too much too soon. My basic feeling is, my job is to educate, and that involves respecting the intelligence of the people in my class. With high school students, when they are curious about sex and sexuality, and about the consumption of illegal drugs and alcohol, I answer their questions appropriately, on the basis of what I have come to know through my own experience over the decades -- which is not really all that much, I hasten to add.
And I am happy to report that most students at that age are content with that approach. The problem, always, is overly protective parents, who do not want their children to know that their teacher sometimes smoked marijuana, or sometimes has had too much to drink, or is gay. They do not want them even to know that homosexuality exists.
With young children such as the ones in your photograph, parental protectiveness regarding all kinds of potentially disturbing influences makes sense. But with older children, parents need to let go; their responsibility is to allow their children to learn about the contents of the universe on their own.
Also it should be remembered that different children react to different stimuli in different ways. I remember my third-grade teacher, a young nun, reading to us the story of a girl dying of leukemia. God knows what the moral was: a good Catholic girl, happily accepting the will of God that she must die, and meanwhile becoming all the more cheerful and loving to her family and friends and doctors and nurses? Gevalt! All I got out of it was the graphic description of her symptoms, which of course I internalized. Am I feeling a bit weak today?, I would ask myself; heavens, I think I am dizzy, I should sit down; good gracious me, this school bag is heavy!; why is there this strange numbness in my hands and feet? And so forth. I very much hope I was the only one of my classmates, subjected to this odd reading selection, to have such a morbid and depressive reaction.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Newsquoter Posted 10:32 pm
07 Nov 2006
Not enough done to combat climate change say young people, who will face the effects
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:05 am
08 Nov 2006
I think Canis sums it up here:
With young children such as the ones in your photograph, parental protectiveness regarding all kinds of potentially disturbing influences makes sense. But with older children, parents need to let go; their responsibility is to allow their children to learn about the contents of the universe on their own.
And it is up to each parent to take it from there.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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bookerly Posted 6:40 pm
08 Nov 2006
I should have been a bit clearer. I certainly have no problems with protecting kids, and there are many subjects that are inappropriate for them at certain ages.
(IMHO)
It's sort of like, at what age do you start taking kids to funerals?
I am not sure there is a correct answer (nor do I wish to impose mine on anyone else).
OTH, if this article is fake (like I suspect), then who is using and abusing the children's innocence?
Certainly we need to protect kids from information they can't handle. Dumping our fears and worries on them is pointless and cruel.
patrick
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SMLowry Posted 2:54 am
09 Nov 2006
On the other hand, they were more educated than their friends about the environment. They helped count thousands of signatures on petitions, get out mailings, and put up with me being gone more than they'd like. They were proud when I sent information on, for example, recycling, rainforest destruction, clearcutting, and renewable energy that got used in their classroom.
BUT . . . as they got older, early - mid-teens, they also had more moments of "I know the world's not going to be here in twenty years" than many of their friends. They didn't get that sense from me directly. It was their interpretation or internalization of the information they got from me combined with political realities. It was their logical conclusion. This was deeply troubling to me because the last thing I wanted was for my sons to not have hope for the future. I wanted them to believe anything is possible, as I did when I was their age. As I still do, though it is tempered with realilty.
During those years (mid 1980 to early 1990s) I had a sign in my office that read, "I don't believe in miracles, I rely upon them". I've seen and experienced many so-called miracles in my life. I believe there's so much more to everyday reality than what we can see and hear and touch. We exist in a complex whole that is amazing and magical (yes I will use that word). I've had experiences of connections and relationships and possibilities that to some might sound like fantasy or wishful thinking or something less flattering.
After my sister's accident that resulted in severe brain injury (in 1981, they know so much more about the brain now than they did then), they did an EEG. It revealed lots of activity (at least she wasn't brain dead) but it was totally chaotic. While the neurologist knew this didn't look great, he couldn't say for sure that her brain would not somehow make new connections and heal. I told him that "my hope lies in what you don't know". And lo and behold, new connections were made, she came out of the coma and over time and with lots of hard work, regained her ability to speak, write, walk, think, and have a good life, though it's different than what it would have been had the accident not occurred. Miracles happen, but they take work.
My sons, however, do not necessarily share my view of the world and what's possible. They are more logical than I am although the youngest is an artist and is beginning to get where I'm coming. As an artist he sees the world differently than his brothers. We have wonderful conversations about the nature of reality and human participation and what's possible.
My middle son listens and then puts the information in a compartment somewhere like most folks. On the one hand he knows shit will happen. On the other hand he doesn't believe it will, if that makes any sense.
My oldest knows shit will happen. He believes he will live to see radical changes in the environment and his vision is a self-sufficient family homestead in Vermont where he lives, big enough so that when things get bad everyone he loves can come live there and somehow we'll make it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one.
But with the exception of my middle son, both my youngest and oldest have been prone to bouts of depression and I've learned that this is not that uncommon in young people these days. It can lead to risky behavior (as they say) and can rob them of the passion and drive needed to move forward.
I'm not sure what the answer is. We live in troubled times. I think we do our kids no favors by protecting them from what's going on. We're not going to give them the skills they need to live in a changing world if we deny reality to protect them. I think kids feel hopeful if they know that their parents are doing what they can to make the world better.
Telling them they'll be the ones to change things . . . not so good because, well, I can remember thinking my generation would be the one to change things, to correct the many mistakes of my parent's generation and now we're putting it off on our kids? I don't think so. I often wonder what happened to my generation that so many of us ended up being seduced by "the system" and in so doing created even more problems than our parents did.
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caniscandida Posted 5:08 am
09 Nov 2006
I think I understand the superficially contradictory position of your middle son: Yes, shit happens, but, no, I do not believe it will. Of course, there is no way to explain it. It reminds me of that radically ambivalent story told by Hesiod, about Pandora and her box. The story is quite clear: at the end, Pandora closes the box, and Hope is caught inside. But what does that mean? Is humanity better off, or worse off, that Hope remains caught inside Pandora's box?
It was not exactly a miracle -- I am sure there is some rational explanation -- , but still quite a surprise, that I was just sent in the mail a catalogue, titled "Creative Irish Gifts." There are all kinds of Irish-related chochkes and goo-gaws, woolen things, lace things, glass things inscribed "Guinness" for use in one's bar, jewelry decorated with Celtic knots, all kinds of other stuff also decorated with Celtic knots, inscriptions too, in English or Irish Gaelic, written in Irish semi-uncial on anything with a writing surface, and so forth: the subtext of all of which is clearly, "Is it not a grand and glorious thing, to have been born an Irishman!" (At which point I might repeat a rather acetic witticism pronounced by Garrison Keillor some years ago, which got him into a fair amount of trouble with Irish-American listeners of "Prairie Home Companion." But I won't.)
Actually, I admire the remarkable interest in good, clever texts, brilliant expressions drawn from a great oral-literary tradition, displayed on lots of these curious little objects. That interest is not something one would find in a catalogue aimed at, say, Italian-Americans. I am particularly fond of this ironic inscription, on a refrigerator magnet, which came to mind as I was reading about your sons' predicament: "An Irishman has an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustains him through temporary periods of joy."
It is undeniably true, as you write, that we live in troubled times. That truth will be more evident to some than to others. It is also true that times keep changing; and it is less and less clear what wisdom we old guys have (ha ha), which we might profitably pass along to our children. As a teacher, of the same generation as my students' parents, I feel quite clueless in understanding what common experiences those students share, or what common influences have shaped their values.
One such possible influence, which is not altogether irrelevant to the subject of "scary movies," is the playing of computer games. I have never found them at all interesting, and have never played any of them. And no doubt that is true as well of many children and young people. And yet, it seems fair to observe that most young people, growing up in the past two decades, are aware of these games and their contents. Some of them, notoriously, are based on fantasies of astounding violence, perpetrated by these otherwise innocent young players. So, what is that all about? Does parental protectiveness rightly extend that far? How does this kind of virtual reality/fantasy affect children's sense of what the real world is really like, and what their place in it as responsible moral agents ought to be? Are we to believe that exposing children to "An Inconvenient Truth" is going to be more damaging than allowing them to play murder-filled computer games?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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SMLowry Posted 9:38 am
09 Nov 2006
My 7 year old grandson went through a period of time, when his uncle, my youngest, was staying with them and he had the "latest" in gaming stuff, that my grandson became actually addicted to the games. He'd have a fit when his parents would turn the thing off and wouldn't want to do anything else. They took him off cold turkey and now he's extremely limited as to how long he can play (or watch TV). It's much better.
I remember reading somewhere that too much video games and television can shorten kids' attention spans. And it has to do something to their view of reality, absolutely. But then I'll never forget one night when Nick (my grandson) was about five. We were watching The Three Stooges, which were on one of those old movie channels. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Nick bopped his father over the head, hard, just like one of the Three Stooges just did. Of course it wasn't funny on the movie. Every once in a while over the next few days his parents would catch him doing the Three Stooges thing. It eventually wore off.
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midenka1 Posted 11:10 pm
20 Sep 2007
My kids are pretty aware, in their kidlike ways, of what issues face us. I am proud of them for that. Right now for them its about not stepping on ants and never using a/c at home or in the car (we live in Portland so that's not so hard) and recycling. My 9 year old is excited to help build a bioswale at her school. Great.
When I sense their awareness branching into fear, or anger at our species, I try to remind them of three things. 1. As my son loves to say, "We don't know the future." 2. Things do heal (they've seen that happen plenty of times.) 3. As humans we have the capacity to think and make change; we can each take steps to heal things.
These three ideas may not carry them into their teen years, when their ability with abstract reasoning will introduce them to new levels of conceptual tragedy. I hope however, that some of this simple orientation will stay with them.
Maybe we all need to freak out at some point about all this. But the despair that can weigh us down when we look at what we've done to the earth can also inhibit our ability to heal things around us. I think we need a dose of hope in order to have the strength to take any steps at all. We also need humility -
we really don't know the future, and can't know whether any of our good actions will be enough or will be quick enough. All we can do is take what action our lives will allow.
We need to teach our kids how to look squarely at a whole lot of different sorts of difficult realities without it driving them mad.
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