On Monday afternoon in mid-December, I stood at the end of my street in the pouring rain, waiting for a school bus that was carrying my children and running late. The morning forecast for snow-melting warm temperatures and light rain had turned rapidly and unexpectedly into a day full of emergency text alerts warning of localized flooding: The Winooski River winding through our community in northern Vermont close to overflowing. Downtown Montpelier, bracing with sandbags again after being battered by floodwaters this summer. Students at an elementary school just 20 miles from my home, evacuated early in the morning as water began to rise in their classrooms. And a notice from my own children’s school that some afternoon bus routes would be delayed due to a smattering of impassable local roads.
My children arrived home safely on the bus, thankfully. But the day was another reminder—at the end of a year full of reminders—that climate change is already affecting families’ lives in the here and now, and already fundamentally altering the landscape of childhood. Though all of us feel the impacts of climate change on our well-being, children’s smaller, still-developing bodies and psyches make them especially vulnerable to climate threats like stronger storms, extreme temperatures, and air polluted by wildfire smoke.
Climate impacts can affect babies’ well-being before they even take their first breath: extreme heat, air pollution, and the stress of climate disasters have all been linked with adverse birth outcomes, such as preterm birth and low birth weight. For children, climate change means more days of school and daily routines disrupted by extreme weather. It means more days of recess cancelled because of wildfire smoke, more days when it’s simply too hot to play or learn, and more flooded classrooms and delayed school bus routes. For teenagers and young adults, worry about what it means to grow up in a world with ever-escalating weather extremes can mean a chronic sense of dread and unease about the future, at a moment in life when the future should feel alive with possibility and promise. And for young people in communities already overburdened by pollution and environmental injustice, climate change is a threat multiplier that amplifies existing inequities.
For parents, it’s heartbreaking to know that children will bear the brunt of climate impacts, especially as we feel the intensity of these impacts growing with every passing year. I have to admit that this year’s onslaught of extreme weather—heat waves, wildfire smoke, floods, storms—has left me feeling more than a little unsettled about what next year and the coming years may bring. I take comfort in author Rebecca Solnit’s words in her most recent book about climate change, Not Too Late: “It is late. We are deep in an emergency. But it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided. We are deciding it now.”
None of us can tackle climate change single-handedly. But each of us can decide to act on climate change in the ways that are within reach in our own communities, whether that’s contacting our local lawmakers and demanding urgent action to reduce climate pollution or asking our city planners to make sure young people’s health and environmental justice are front and center as we grapple with ways to adapt to climate impacts. Every climate action we take, no matter how small, is a vote for the future we want our children to live in.
With so much on the line, how could we decide to do anything but try?
Read our new fact sheet: CLIMATE DISRUPTION, AIR POLLUTION, AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S HEALTH.
TELL CONGRESS: SUPPORT YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH AND ACCESS TO CLIMATE EDUCATION