Pirate's Cove

I’d recommend one that was based on the Scientific Model, ditching the reliance on computer models, and dropping the doomsaying

For 2023 let’s agree. We need a new climate change narrative

If you are around teenagers and you’ve got more than a decade on them, they don’t seem to have much to say to you.

It might seem as if they are doing nothing but texting or playing games on their phones, but they hear and see more than you think, and they’re thinking about what’s happening around them. More than you know.

At News Decoder each year, we ask students in our partner schools to pitch us ideas for news stories. Most want to report on big things happening across the world: police brutality, sex trafficking, transphobia, abortion. They get news off of social media about what’s happening around the world. And they pay attention.

Then we suggest they look closer to home and ask them if they can identify problems in their schools, neighborhoods or cities. It doesn’t take them long: pollution in a nearby river, an overcrowded animal shelter, discrimination against disabled people they know. They pay attention to conversations around them and to what people say to each other on social media.

In the story pitches students submitted to us this past year, they identified again and again two particular problems that worried them — climate change and mental health.

These two problems are connected.

Yes, they are, because the adults are making them have poor mental health with all the “we’re all doomed!!!!” talk.

Let’s focus on solutions and problem solvers.

At News Decoder, we encourage young people to write stories about problems around them. Now we want them to focus on solutions.

This year, we teamed up with the Climate Academy at the European School Brussels II and the nonprofit Global Youth & News Media to launch a global storytelling contest, as part of a larger climate change project called The Writing’s on the Wall. For the competition, we ask teens to find people in their local communities who are working to solve our climate crisis in some way — with projects that take us off fossil fuels, perhaps, or by pressuring governments or corporations to take meaningful systemic actions.

So, stories of trying to force Other People to comply, and ones that perpetuate the coming climate apocalypse (scam)? How does that help?

Teens see the problems around them. That much is clear. But it is making them anxious and frustrated because all they see are adults doing nothing. So now we ask them this: Can you identify the problem solvers around you? Can we tell stories about climate change solutions?

For our New Year’s resolution we are going to try to change the narrative from one of despondency to one of inspiration and motivation. Help us spread the word about our storytelling competition. Encourage teens around you to find a climate change problem solver in your community.

The solution is easy