Bush Kids Ask About Climate Change in New Videos
Tom’s parents were packing to evacuate from bushfires in regional Victoria five years ago when they realised they couldn’t find Tom, who was only two and a half.
After a frantic search, they found him at the bottom of the driveway. He was wearing just a nappy, his sandals and bike helmet and was poised over his balance bike, backpack at the ready.
He had loaded it up with what a two-year-old thinks of as life’s essentials: his favourite toys, and his nappy cream.
Tom was so frightened that he had got himself ready to escape. Bush kids learn early about the power of Australia’s climate.
In response to kids’ climate questions two climate expert mothers have developed a series of videos Climate Kids, where primary-school children ask their questions and the mums answer them in a fun, fact-checked way.
Dr Lily O’Neill, a legal researcher with Melbourne Climate Futures at Melbourne Law School, lives in the Victorian Alps in the north-east of the state and is co-host of the series, Climate Kids.
“My kids and their friends can still remember fleeing the 2020 bushfires,” she says. “My oldest is still really worried about bushfire threats - he talks about it a lot. This summer, we have already packed our firebox, and anxiously watch the VicEmergency app.”
But anxiety about snow is also rife: “We are about 45 minutes from Mt Hotham, where the snow each year keeps getting less and less. In our episode Snow and Ice, we have kids asking why there isn’t any snow when it’s the middle of August. They are pointing to mud where snow should be.
“I asked one climate scientist what he would advise these kids who love skiing and tobogganing in the snow so much, and he said he would tell them to get a new hobby. It’s heartbreaking.”
Dr O’Neill’s co-host is Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne. In each episode Dr O’Neill talks about what is happening in the present, and Dr Ashcroft speaks of life in a future that has been saved due to climate action. The questions are from primary students at Bright College.
Dr Ashcroft says, “We did not prompt the kids at all, but their questions cover every aspect of the climate crisis: melting snow, bushfires, impact on animals, countries disappearing under the sea and what happens to people who live there, what technology can do, why we are still digging up coal.
“The kids all want to know what we are doing about it, and the answer really is that we have all the solutions, we just need to get the adults in their lives to act with more urgency.”
Dr O’Neill says they have kept the videos positive and reminded the children that their voices matter too – research shows that adults’ views can be strongly influenced by what their children tell them.
“What climate scientists keep saying is that it is not too late to act. Every fraction of a degree of warming that we prevent by reducing our use of fossil fuels is hugely positive for our planet.”
Climate Kids videos are hosted on YouTube and are open source, free to be used by media or teachers.
Ep 1: What is climate change?
Ep 2: Can technology save us?
Ep 3: Why are we still digging up fossil fuels?
Ep 4: The oceans
Ep 5: Snow and ice