I’ve heard a lot of doom mongering in talking to people from my generation over the past few years about climate change: a view, repeated ad nauseam, that humanity’s self-destructive tendencies have wrecked the planet, that it won’t recover until our species goes the way of the dinosaurs. Well, maybe - but have they ever heard of self-fulfilling prophecies?

That sort of fatalism is not going to turn things around over the coming decades and, frankly, we owe it to younger people not to throw in the towel over climate change - they, of course, are the ones who are going to spend longer dealing with the consequences.

We need to give young people hope for the future. Not blind optimism that disregards the facts of climate change, but a hope born of the knowledge that we are also an ingenious species; that by fostering young people’s skills and resourcefulness, they, even at an individual level, can make a meaningful contribution in the collective battle against climate change.

The prospect of environmental catastrophe can induce an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in children. Adults should not be reinforcing that despair - they should be proving to young people that, however insurmountable climate change may seem at times, they do have agency and they can build a sustainable future for generations to come.

COP26: Schools helping to tackle climate change

Schools, of course, have a critical role to play in that, as will be repeatedly underlined when the COP26 climate conference finally opens in Glasgow on Sunday.

David Reay, professor of carbon management and education at the University of Edinburgh, sets things in context by saying that “if you think about a five-year-old today, whatever job they are going to be doing in, say, 20 years’ time, it’s going to be shaped by the climate emergency, by tackling the nature crisis”.

Yet, there is a danger that young people will feel paralysed, not motivated, by the climate emergency. Researchers at the University of Bath recently asked 10,000 young people across 10 countries about their thoughts and feelings on it. They found that 59 per cent of 16- to 25-year-olds were worried or extremely worried about climate change and over 45 per cent said that their feelings about it negatively affected their daily lives.

Experts writing in the British Medical Journal recently warned about the damage wreaked by “eco-anxiety”, and that the climate crisis was taking a growing toll on children’s mental health. They said that it was important to counteract that by giving young people “information on how they could connect more strongly with nature, contribute to greener choices at an individual level and join forces with like-minded communities and groups”.

There is no getting away from the issue of climate change, but what can schools practically do?

Reay wants “climate champions” deployed in schools to support teachers, and climate change to be embedded in the curriculum so that all school leavers have a detailed understanding of how it will affect their lives and what careers it could present to them.

Teachers, says Reay, also need a bank of up-to-date climate resources. These are often lacking at the moment, as was made clear by the recent furore about a school textbook that asked secondary students to consider the “positives” of climate change.

Reay also wants to see teachers using their collective clout. “Teachers need to make their voices heard,” he says, and to vent their frustration at any barriers to teaching about climate change effectively.

One of most satisfying things about being a teacher is that, whatever the day-to-day frustrations of the job, you know that your work could end up having a lifelong impact on your students.

The profound, lasting influence of teachers on young lives has - given the seriousness of the climate emergency - never been more crucial as a force for common good.

@Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 29 October 2021 issue under the headline “Hope is key to fostering the eco-champions of the future”