“The Earth is dying”, “the world is on fire”, we’re undergoing an “environmental extinction”: just three of the sentiments which have been expressed by today’s climate “strikers” and which, unlike even moderate expressions of scepticism on matters of climate science, seem to escape without challenge.
While it is tempting to think of today’s climate “strike” by schoolchildren around the world as a case of truants finding an ethical excuse to skip lessons, I think many are acting for genuine reasons: they are traumatised. They are the reflection of the hyperbolic coverage of climate change by Al Gore, Hollywood and even, latterly, David Attenborough – films where footage of fires, hurricanes and calving glaciers is stitched together to give the impression of impending doom. How many of these kids know that hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are a natural part of the tropical climate and were going on many millennia before significant man-made carbon emissions? I rather wonder.
Any headteacher who values his or her pupils’ education will not turn a blind eye to today’s absences, still less join the kids for a march, as some are reported to be doing.
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