Children and Climate Change: Eleven Ways To Make Earth A Child Safe Zone

Children and Climate Change: Eleven Ways To Make Earth A Child Safe Zone

(Photo: People's Climate March, New York City)

To all Earth activists, parents, teachers, and policy makers: we cannot, must not, heap on children the impact of our unsustainable ways of living. The scientific evidence is irrefutable. For the first time in several million years, in 2016 the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. In October 2018 CO2 was at 408 ppm and CO2 concentrations could easily pass 500 ppm in the coming decades, raising average global temperatures, driving acidification of the oceans, causing frequent extreme weather events, impacting availability of food and access to water, making the planet a hostile environment for people by the end of the century. And so, our urgent task is to push down the risks to protect our kids, acknowledging in good conscience, we cannot expect them to be responsible for our transgressions or to solve the problems we have created.

Don’t frighten the kids. If we want to make Earth a child safe zone we have to change the way we live on the planet.
Make sure kids are aware but do not scare them. It will have a negative impact on their health and wellbeing, and their capacity to solve the problems we are bequeathing to them.
Reconnect kids with the planet. We have unearthed our children. From baby play through childhood, kids need to experience how awesome it is to live with the planet.
Make sure all kids have joyful learning experiences so they can use their imaginations, be creative, and become the great problem solvers they will need to be to tackle the damage to the planet, which is our legacy.
Live simply for kids. Children should not have to live in the future in ways we are not prepared to live today.
Help kids live simply to simply live. Practice a new kind of worldliness together.
Ask yourself the carbon dioxide question: “How can we participate in pushing down the risks of rising CO2? “If I can walk why do I need a car? Why two cars? Three?” In 25 years we could reach our CO2 limit for human life on Earth. Get rid of the car unless it is absolutely essential. “Do I need a car?” This is just one of many essential questions.
Get your information from scientific primary sources and resist media hype and the unconscionable propaganda of climate change deniers.
Become an activist to make Earth a child safe zone. Insist on social environments that have a sustainable infrastructure, for example with people-movers and less cars.
Build strong, diverse, equitable, social communities for kids. Inequality is bad for kids and bad for the planet.
Kids in more equal societies thrive. Kids in more unequal societies struggle to survive and so does the planet.