#ClimateCrisis #Ireland #education
"Children can be taught about climate change without alarm or guilt
At a Time of Climate Crisis: Brilliant jobs to protect the planet can protect children from despair
I was recently asked by my kids’ primary school to give a talk about climate change, a challenge I enthusiastically accepted but approached with trepidation. While the topic is undoubtedly an essential part of their education, I would not want to make their classmates anxious. How far should we go in spelling out the reality that we are profoundly altering the planet they will inherit?
The reality is deeply distressing, and when I’m invited to give public talks to adults, I don’t hold back in setting out the gravity of the situation and the urgency of action.
But an innocent, carefree childhood should be every child’s right, and I wouldn’t want to burden them with a problem they did not cause.
So I took another approach. I told the children about two things: where our energy comes from – almost entirely the sun – and about all the brilliant jobs they can do when they’re older to help protect the planet.
(. . .)
We used the book Your Planet Needs You! Brilliant Jobs to Protect Your World, written by Elizabeth Laird and Will McDowall, and I had them design their own planet-protecting jobs. (My favourite idea was a job feeding people beans, capturing the resulting emissions, and using this as an energy source.)
I wanted them to understand that the problem is serious, but there are solutions, that many adults are working on it and that, when they grow up, they can join in this effort too.
I hope I left the class informed and empowered, rather than crippled by climate anxiety."
https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2026/11/05/children-can-be-taught-about-climate-change-without-alarm-or-guilt/