#ClimateDiary 13yo asked me just now: why does noone care about climate change anymore?
They watched this Prince Ea poem, “Sorry” at school last week, and apparently everyone just laughed, nobody cared.
It is very good but it does feel like from a different era - 2024 really does feel different to 2015-20. Not for everyone, of course, but the climate momentum just isn’t there just now. Hope it takes off again soon and that this time it really does change things.
This is a really salient point that I don't hear a lot of people making. My wife teaches high school, and anecdotally, a couple years ago she would always say that the kids didn't question climate change at all. They all understood. Now they often say it doesn't exist, or it's a hoax. She went from being optimistic about "the kids" to totally dismayed.
@BE Is this one where we really CAN "Blame the parents"? @pvonhellermannn
There is a young woman in our neighborhood who helps me with yard work for an hour after school one day a week.
We talk about things as we work, and last spring we talked about her getting her driver's license after her birthday in the summer. She told me she was committed to continuing to take the bus to school or riding her bike, for environmental reasons. I gave her a lot of positive feedback and praise for that, but once school started in the fall, she was driving every day.
I asked her why she changed her mind, and her stated reason was that choir practice is after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she didn't want to have to wait 20 minutes after practice for the activity bus...
I wish I could place my finger on this recent survey, but it was around 3-4 weeks ago and a part of it was about 18-25 year olds and I am pretty certain the take home message was that while they overwhelmingly believed in climate change, only ~6% were willing to sufficiently change their behaviors to deal with it.
Maybe someone else will show up with a link to it. I'm wondering how well I'm remembering it because I can't find it at all.
I’d be glad to chat w your wife’s classroom.
Yes, I may be a climate scientist now… but in an alternate world, I would be 4th generation in the oil business.
I get it.
I can talk to anyone.
I sincerely appreciate that offer! If she were still working in the brick and mortar classroom I bet she'd take you up on it.
She, however, works at a school that's been doing virtual school for decades for a few years now. She has over 100 kids, each of whom she works with individually, one on one, so there's no classroom to talk to.
That’s great. Our education officer at nasa giss started one of the first remote only school options for high schoolers in LA— we do talks to these kinds of groups, too.
LMK if she just needs resources. And otherwise keep up the good work.
💪
Very much appreciated!
@BE yes, it is dismaying. Especially the hoax part. But it can change again; maybe it is just really all in cycles, for individuals, and movements as a whole, and maybe that is even a necessary part of it - a pause, then re configuration. I hope there is scope for that; and that it is not sustained climate denial resurgence.