Tell Us: How Do You Teach Your Kids About Climate Change?


When I was in New Hampshire recently, I met Sarah Larson Dennen, a teacher at Moharimet Elementary School in Madbury. We were talking about something else entirely – the decline of New England’s sugar maple – but another part of our on-carmera interview has stuck with me ever since: how Sarah teaches her young students about climate change.

“Language is really key when you’re talking to kids,” Sarah explained. “I don’t use terms like ‘global warming‘. I use terms like ‘climate change’. And I try to back things up by really showing them data.”

“I look to see that these kids are care-takers of our whole natural world,” she said.

That got me thinking: how do you teach your kids about climate change? You don’t want to tell your kids the world is in uttter peril… right? But if they ask about climate change, what do you say?

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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