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

If the world reached net zero by 2050, the International Energy Agency calculates that a child born in the EU this decade would emit only one-fifteenth as much carbon dioxide over their lifetime as someone born there in the 1950s. Picture: iStock

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.