Talking to Children about Climate Change | Sandra Steingraber | Orion Magazine
So, how long are you going to keep hiding the truth from your kids?
That’s as far as I got before three other notable things happened. First, Elijah asked to be a polar bear for Halloween. As I pinned the chenille fabric, it occurred to me that his costume might well outlast the species. I decided not to tell him that.
A month later, Elijah asked his sister for a weather report. Faith walked out onto the porch, spread out her arms in the manner of Saint Francis, and came back in. “It’s global warmingish,” she said and went back to her cereal. No comment from me.
And then I overheard a conversation on the playground. One child said, “I know why it’s hot. Do you?”
Another said, “It’s because the Earth is sick.” They all nodded. I said nothing.
IT’S TIME TO SIT DOWN with my kids and have the Global Warming Talk.
...
So I am working on my talk. For inspiration, I have arranged on my desk three documents. One is an essay that Rachel Carson published in Popular Science in 1951—eight years before my birth. It’s entitled “Why Our Winters Are Getting Warmer,” and it includes a drawing of Manhattan deluged by seawater. Another is Carson’s essay “Help Your Child to Wonder,” published five years later. The third is a book by poet Audre Lorde that includes the sentence: Your silence will not protect you.
My talk features a story about a boat in which we all live—people, butterflies, polar bears. A storm starts to rock the boat. The waves are chemical pollution, habitat destruction, industrial fishing, and warfare. Now along comes a really big wave. Global warming. The already-rocking boat is in danger of flipping over.
Then what happens? I don’t know. For the first time in my life, I have writer’s block. Somebody help me out here.
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1 comment:
Let me tell a quick story:
My 10 year-old daughter(5th grader)tells me that she's worried about global warming. She'd been hearing about it at school for a couple of years, blah, blah, blah. She was born in the middle of the summer in 1998 (a very hot day I remember - about 100° that day). Anyway, so she's worried about GW, and I tell her that despite what she may have heard, the earth has been cooling since 1998. And I go on to put things in perspective for her. I tell her that there has been NO warming in her life. Her eyes get big and she says, "Sheesh! What's everybody all worried about then!" Then she turns around and marches out of the room.
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