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They mix one-sided climate hype and six year olds. What did they think would happen?

They declare a climate emergency and use children as political weapons and wonder why children are distressed?

ABC needs to run advice columns now dealing with the aftermath of watching the ABC:

How to talk to children about climate change

ABC Radio National By Sarah Scopelianos

It’s bad:

… one protest, against the Adani coal mine, sparked a “tough moment” for her son, who was around six at the time. He became “absolutely devastated” about global warming and damage to the Great Barrier Reef. “He cried, and he was so distressed, and I was quite taken aback just how strong his feelings were,” Ms Roberts [his mother] says.

Expert psych says give them both sides of the story… no wait, she says turn them into mini activists:

Environmental psychologist and therapist Dr Susie Burke co-wrote the Australian Psychological Society guidelines on talking to children about climate change.

Dr Burke advocates for parents to support their children, which could include helping their child write or send their letters to a local politician, or to heroes of the environmental movement.

“It’s helping children to shift their anxiety from just focusing on the troublemakers,” Dr Burke says.

Skeptics say “teach them history” instead, and that they need to research both sides of the debate.

Ms Roberts, the activist parent, thinks nature made her kids activists:

The Roberts family has a strong connection with nature that began with simply spending time outdoors — camping, gardening, visiting beaches and forests. “That’s mostly where their strong feelings of wanting to get active are currently coming from,” says Ms Roberts, who is a member of Australian Parents for Climate Action.

Does spending time outdoors make kids want to be climate activists, or is it spending time with activist parents really the problem?

She might want to look at the data on postcodes of kids suffering with climate anxiety and eco-fear.

Meanwhile councillor Dick Gross says we should scare them til we have evidence to show they are actually mentally ill:

Is this the right time to say “precautionary principle”:

His council was one of the first to declare a “climate emergency”, and he says there is space for that phrase in conversations with kids.

“The moral panic that we’re terrifying our kids is either not true or it’s exaggerated,” he says.

“To get people to change their beliefs on climate change, you have to have tangible evidence and you have to scare people,” he says.

“Until the evidence comes in that there’s been an outbreak of mental ill health because of the climate conversation, I’ll still continue to take my view that from an epistemological point of view, we have to scare people or at least make them aware.”

If only he had waited for evidence that it was worth scaring kids in the first place.

 

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