Parents and Climate Change
I led my recent parents’ support group on climate change and young people. We watched Adam Sazama’s TED talk, “Hope Leads to Action.” [Adam Sazama is a young Co-Counselor.]
Our children range from age three to in their thirties. Some of them participated in the recent day of climate action—they left school and participated in rallies across the city.
I talked about our unique position as parents. We have the opportunity to communicate clearly and truthfully to young people about climate change. We can follow their leadership on it as they grow into teenagers and young adults.
We had great sessions about our roles as parents, allies to young people, and wide-world-change agents. Some of us feel bad about how little we are doing. Some of us feel frustrated that our children don’t seem to care as much as we do about climate change. I especially appreciated Adam’s message that “this is an exciting time to be alive” and that anything we do to take action and stay hopeful about the future will move us forward. I counseled several people using that direction—it was awesome.
Portland, Oregon, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail
discussion list for leaders of parents