ATL

Global warning

What kind of message are today's children getting on tackling climate change, asks children's author Kate Thompson

To coincide with the release of The white horse trick, my publishers commissioned a survey of schoolchildren to assess attitudes towards climate change.

The results make interesting reading, with 83 per cent saying they are worried about the future of the planet, and the same number reporting that they are doing their bit to help, in terms of recycling, saving energy and so on. There can't be any doubt that the message has been brought home to young people. The writing is well and truly on the wall.

In 2007 I spent three months in Bristol, as writer-in-residence funded by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The brief was wide open - as long as it had some bearing on ecology, I could use the time in any way I wished.

I chose to study climate change and The white horse trick emerged as a result of what I learned. Its setting is a future Ireland, where the results of global warming are having a drastic effect on the population.

I'm writing this in late November and we are getting a foretaste of that future. Unprecedented rainfall and flooding have brought chaos to large parts of the country, including my own area, where many roads are closed and homes abandoned. It has been described as a 'once-in-a-thousand-years' event, but that sounds very much like wishful thinking. According to most climate scientists, this is the shape of things to come.

Meanwhile, the Copenhagen summit is under way and looking more and more as if it will be yet another flop. It has to be asked, what kind of message is all this giving to the next generation?

There is more interesting information in the survey of schoolchildren. This is one of the questions: "Who do you think is responsible for helping to stop climate change?" The responses are as follows:

• adults: 4 per cent

• big companies: 7 per cent

• government: 19 per cent

• everyone, including me: 70 per cent.

I think there's a very significant little germ of information in this, which exposes one of the major stumbling blocks in the way of tackling the problem.

The idea that climate change can be addressed by individual action is a myth, but it is easy to understand why it has been so widely embraced. It suits those in power, because it enables them to continue in their short-termism, putting economic development, corporate interests and the next election at the centre of government policy, while throwing the occasional few crumbs in the direction of the environmentalists. And it suits the population at large because action is optional. We, the baby boomers, can soothe our consciences by filling the recycling bin, buying low-energy bulbs and shopping ethically, while maintaining essentially unsustainable lifestyles.

If climate change is to be seriously addressed, governments, globally, are going to have to take responsibility and make changes that may not be entirely comfortable. The myth of personal responsibility needs to be exposed and decommissioned, and this will take effort on both sides. Governments need to tell the truth and ask for a mandate to make the changes that will be necessary. And we, the adults, need to bite the bullet and give that mandate, loud and clear.

There is a lot of talk about how spoiled children are in developed societies, and there may be some validity in this. The inability to delay gratification is often mentioned. But what kind of an example are we - their parents and grandparents - setting? After all, aren't we the ones who are behaving like spoiled children? We are, metaphorically, filling our faces for the sake of immediate satisfaction, in the full knowledge that adversity is imminent, and that someone else will have to bear the consequences of our self-indulgence.

Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson's new novel The white horse trick will be out in paperback in the spring, priced £5.99

Illustration (c) Phil Wrigglesworth