Read on Twitter
Today, we covered climate change in class. A key takeaway from students: the environmental messaging they’ve received for years is full of so much doom, gloom, and negativity that it makes them want to give up. They feel they’ve been told since childhood that things are hopeless
We talked about how it’s real, it’s bad, it’s us, but we *can* still do something about it. Many of them said they’d only ever heard the “it’s real, it’s bad, it’s us” part, and had assumed it was simply too late to do *anything* because of the bombardment of negative messaging.
We talked about @ProjectDrawdown (benefits of zoom class, can pull books off my shelf to show!), examples of communicating based on empathy & common ground (thanks @KHayhoe!), bright spots ( @ElenaBennett!), engaging in democracy, & how many smart, brave people are working on this
I don’t think we should sugarcoat climate change. It’s bad, and will get worse. But we also can’t afford a generation of bright, kind, brave students convinced there’s nothing to be done. When we say “it’s real, it’s bad, it’s us..” we can’t forget the “we can still do something”
