Hello parents reading this. This is a pretty heavy subject and I'm a both surprised and not surprised how it is avoided so much here in mumsnet land.. You would think that as an online space dedicated to parenthood, the incredibly dire future of our children would be a hot topic. But no everyone would rather chat about the new Christmas ad and parking issues.
The truth is, if we keep going the same as we have been going, 5C of warming is locked in before the end of the century. That's not slightly hotter days and ooh it will be a bit like Spain in England. It mean total civilisational collapse brought about by global crop failure, mass movement of people and water wars. Our children will witness the end of civilisation in their lifetimes. It's looking likely we will witness it in ours. We have been failed by our governments and our media to fully communicate the truth about it.
I have a 4 year old, she's awesome, and I grieve for her future and that of her friends. I don't talk about climate change with her because I want her childhood to be as carefree as possible for as long as possible. But she knows that we live as mindfully as possible on the earth, we don't waste things and pick up plastic and do nice things instead of buying all the things.
When it becomes unavoidable, I will try to be as calmly factual as possible but also keep in front of her all the work that people are doing to help try and turn the ship around. Her Dad works for an international environmental NGO, and I am currently changing out of my career into climate communications related work and also volunteering with a new climate mobilisation group. I was a self employed wedding photographer but I can no longer bear to do that while the planet burns. I am lucky in that I am able to do that, I understand it's not as simple for other people, work wise.
This piece by George Monbiot really resonated with me, and with so many others, people were sharing it online who I had never seen engage with climate issues before - www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/18/governments-no-longer-trusted-climate-change-citizens-revolt - and I started looking in Extinction Rebellion. I could write reams and reams about what they are doing (TL:DR AWESOME!) but that's a whole other thread.
What is happening is that there are lots of people actually getting up and doing stuff about it. And we need you to do it to. And you know what? When you start connecting with other people who care about this, and you work with them for our collective future, some of the gut roiling anxiety starts to melt away. You actually start to have fun, and make friends with beautiful, lively, passionate people who won't mind if you now and again cry about climate change. They will cry with you and then you get up and get to work. Hope sparks.
But we need more of you. Small individual life-style changes and small minded, peevish emotional responses and timidly hoping that the government will fix it will not be enough. Those tiny, innefectual responses will do nothing except kill our children and wipe all the beauty off the face of the planet. We don't have time to worry about what people will think, if they think we are just being Debbie Downers. The unfolding crisis, of which we have just seen the first corner of, will be the biggest cataclysm to ever be faced by humanity and it requires a response as equally gargantuan. We need to ask ourselves, what kind of a world do we want for out children, and for everyone else's children, human and not. And instead of waiting for the answer from above, we answer it ourselves. And the world that we need to keep living, one not based on turning every resource into money to be discarded, could be beautiful.
In 12 years time, my daughter will be 16, almost 17. I want her to know that we worked to avert disaster. I wouldn't be able to look her in the eye if she asked me when we knew and what we did when we knew, and if all I could answer was.. 'uh.. nothing really'.