January 24, 2019 • 38 mins
Joshua David Stein and Jason Gay try to wrap their heads around the horror movie that is climate change with help from Dr. Camilo Mora, professor at The University of Hawaii at Manoa and author of a new, mind-blowingly depressing paper that shows a little too clearly what's coming our way, disaster-wise. Mora is also a dad, and he, along with Fatherly's parenting expert, Patrick Coleman, talk to Joshua and Jason about how to help their kids navigate this new reality — and be authentic dads in its midst.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast. I'm your host,
Joshua david Stein, joined by Jason Gay. Hello, Joshua, Hello Jason.
Today we're going to talk about climate change, specifically, how
do you raise your children knowing that they will likely
have to face zombies in the upcoming catastrophic climate crisis?
(00:36):
A good one, right, We're gonna talk to Kamilo mora
professor at the University of Hawaii who wrote a mind
blowingly depressing paper on the topic. The choices are between
bad on very well right now what we had, but
I'm telling you don't want to be in a very
well situation. And Patrick Coleman, Fatherly's own parenting expert, on
how do you talk to kids specifically about this topic
(00:59):
and if you settle them with this idea of of
ecological catastrophe, they can actually grow disengaged with the natural world.
Stay tuned, Welcome Terrifogy podcast. I hope you're enjoying the show.
(01:27):
Are you worried at all as a dad about climate change?
You can answer, honestly, I am not, you know, terribly
far removed as a resident of New York City from
Hurricane was it Sandy? Sandy sandy, which you know, put
the neighborhood adjoining my neighborhood underwater. Ya. I live in
(01:49):
Carol Gardens, New York. So the only thing standing between
three ft of water in my basement was the sunken
Brooklyn Queens Expressway basically serves as a you know, yeah,
the um and you know, got to see up close
and personal some real anguish for residents who live in
those low lying areas. And that was something that a
(02:09):
lot of people, you know, I never thought they'd seen
in their lifetime, you know, as we're talking about all
these kind of like shiny bright objects in Washington and
celebrity all the stuff, that there's this massively massive existential
crisis playing out. So I basically have two things that
I'm thinking about then I think about quite often. One
is what can I do as a parent, but more
(02:31):
so just as a person to make a difference if anything,
How didn't how to not surrender just to nihilism and despair?
Then also, how do I prepare my children to function
in a world that I don't know what it's gonna
look like. But I don't think it's gonna look better,
you know, I don't think they're going to have the security,
(02:53):
the food security, the climate security that we have. What
skills should I pass on to them? And then the
other part of parenting in a time of climate change
is should I bother sweating the small stuff at all?
Like I don't love it when Achilles says, fuck you,
you asshole. But on the other hand, in the things,
(03:18):
the grand scheme of things, who cares? Don't do your homework? Fine,
stay up late. We're gonna be battling for resources and
the world's gonna be burning. Have your fun in the
sun while it's not burning your skin, You know what
I mean. And that's what we're gonna talk to you
Camillo about. He has a daughter as well, so I'm
so curious about a this paper he wrote and be
(03:41):
how he talks to his daughter and see how we
should talk to our sons. Camillo, How are you doing, man? Camillo?
So this is the Fatherly Podcast and we talk about
all things related to raising kids. I kind of explained
it a little bit um earlier. You came into my
(04:07):
orbit from that New York Times piece that ran a
couple of weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago,
about the study that you was were the main author
of in Nature Um the headline was something like it's
going to be like a terror movie. And basically in
the study you talk about what the world is going
(04:29):
to look like if we don't take serious mitigating action
by and broadly, I'm interested in how do you balance
that certitude near certitude of impending doom with raising kids.
But before we bang into that, could you walk us
(04:51):
through a little bit of your paper and some of
the major insights and how you put it together. It's
pretty unique, I think, so. Yeah, yeah, I mean this
paper is pretty unique in the sense that we wanted
to put the evidence together. So when we were reading
we were reading papers here. We are a university, and
all of my a lot of my grand students obviously
(05:13):
want to get a handle of overall knowledge. And one
of the things that we started realizing with most of
the knowledge on climate change is the fact that it's
very vague. You know, when you say a hundred thousand
people are going to die from heat waves, or when
you say sea level rise is gonna destroy houses, livelihoods
and things like that, those are that's that's pretty scary,
(05:34):
But where is the evidence? Where had that happened? That?
Let the scientists make those conclusions. So what we decided
to do on this paper was to collect all of
the evidence of things that had already happened. We're not
talking about what will happen in t any one, We're
talking about what did already happen. And we really we
thought that there might be there might not be too
much evidence, and we came across three thousands scientific papers
(05:58):
pointing out cases of how climate change had already impacted
human life. You know, from people dying during heatwaves, from
people dying during hurricanes and floods. Two people not being
able to drive a car because the roads got damage,
to people not even being able to take a flight
because it's so hot that the air doesn't allow the
(06:18):
planes to take off. To electricity being showed down because
there was my functioning of the system because it was
just too hot. And then we start identifying these things
all over the place, and then you just realize when
you put all of these evidence together, it's like pieces
of a postle that when you put together, you realize,
oh my god, this is really scary stuff. And again
(06:42):
it's not too dramatize the thing, but you just need
to put yourself on the lives of people that pay
the ultimate costs already to climate change. And then it
is when you realize why. In the in the New
York New York Times article, I said that this is
like a terror movies. You just need to put yourself
on the situation of the people that lost their lost
their lives are ready to realize that that was probably
prey scary for them. It's just amount of time before
(07:04):
that comes for us. I think one of the things
that it's so striking about the study is that you
really we've full fabric of how all of the crises
are interrelated. And I think you had mentioned that in
a lot of previous papers, the scope is so narrow
(07:25):
that they might tackle one aspect of it. The researchers
might tackle one aspect, but they don't synthesize or do
a quality quantitative kind of um synthesis of a bunch
of different consequences. And that's what you do so terrifyingly
well in your papers. I'm very glad that you point
(07:46):
out that that issue, the fact that all of these
things come together and are connected. So normally what happens
we climate change we normally associate with increases in temperature,
and we normally relate to a polar barry in the
in the Arctic on a popsicle there, right. That's kind
of the postal child of climate change, just the increasing temperature. However,
(08:06):
one of the things that happens is that when you
increase temperature, the wire that is in the soil evaporates,
and then you lead to droughts. When the water runs
out on those places, the heat that comes from the
song has nowhere to go, and then you ended up
having heat waves. And when you had droughts and he waved,
then you had the prime conditions for wildfires. So you
(08:27):
had three things that are connected to each other that
will happen exactly in the same place. California as an
example of that, they have gone through the longest drought
in record to he was that force people to stay
indoors to so of the massive wildfires that are on
record as well. So we're talking about three climatic hazards
happening simultaneously as a consequence of us just doing one thing,
(08:50):
which is to increase the temperature of our planet. The
analogy that I give to this this is like me
getting into a fight with my types on Arnolds's negative
best rest alone. At the same time, I don't want
to interrupt you, but but just for the record, Joshua
probably thinks he could win a fight against Schwarzenegger st
alone get quite a brawny, brawling guy. But two thirds
(09:16):
of them now, and they're I think they're all in
their sixties. But Camilla, like hearing you talk about this, right,
it sounds it's it's dire. I don't think anyone thinks
it's not dire. Do you ever worry about And then
we're gonna jump a little bit more into the parenting
aspect of it. But do you ever worry that you'll
be a Cassandra? Because it's just too much for people
(09:39):
to understanding. Yes, that's the hard part for the scientists. Unfortunately,
it's not it's not going to make it an any
less true, you know what I mean? Why is it
that now for us to cure from this problem, the
solution is to not talk about the problem. This is
like me having a concert that's been caused by mere
(10:00):
smoking tobacco. And now it turns out that talking about
the continent the talac, which is too hard to me.
Oh my god, I get all frightened it by it,
so let's not talk about it, and let's wait for
the best. And and that is the attitude that we're
taking with climate change, which is never a good time
to talk about it. When these things are happening and
killing people. The recommendation of the politicians is no, no, no,
(10:21):
this is not the best time. So when is the
best time. One of the points you make in the paper,
which I think is well taken, is that in developed
countries you see the effects of climate change, primary primarily
being loss of economic economic laws, whereas the costs of
climate change even now in developing countries is a loss
(10:42):
of life. And because we live in a developed part
of a developed um country, I think we experience it
as either inconvenience, which you're right, the blackout was inconvenient,
that heat wave was inconvenient, or loss of economic or
economic laws. Um, but we're not experiencing that dramatic loss
(11:04):
of life which is already happening around the world. Yes, well,
that is again an unfortunate situation though, because I mean, yeah,
I mean the thing is that you look at the
United States, a hundred people die on the wildfires in
in California, you know, and maybe I think that it
was like close to three thousand people die on the
(11:24):
hurricane in Puerto Rico. That's a hurricane. Could to have
been in Philippines or Indonesia, it will have easily be
a hundred thousand people killed there. So just for you
to tell the difference between those the same disturbans happening
in one place and another. Now, unfortunately for the United States,
we're talking losses of billions of dollars though, so it's
(11:46):
kind of interesting how those economic impacts we're talking billions
of dollars in losses don't dramificately down to people paying
more so because unfortunately we had subsidies and economic reliefs
that kind of help soften the blow from these these
store buances there. But again, just creating these comforts in
(12:09):
the devil a world about the issues of climate change,
and you are totally right, people don't feel it as
is strong because fortunately for us in the first world,
we are very resilient to it. But that doesn't mean
that it's cheap and that they problem is getting fixed.
We'll be right back after a brief word from our sponsors.
(12:41):
Now you have laid out a very compelling scenario, and
we are hopefully adult enough here as hosts and with
our listeners to appreciate what you've laid out. We're also
fathers of some very young children who blessed them are
not fully aware of the steaks that confront their world.
(13:03):
And I'm curious what you think about that with regards
of the future. And I believe you're a parent yourself,
and what how how it informs the way that your
parent because you know, obviously you're in a situation where
you want to inform as many people as possible that
you know the stakes here, and you obviously have done that,
But closer to home, how do you handle it? Not
(13:26):
as it shape the way your parents? So about three
years ago I had a daughter myself. She's living years
old now, and we obviously we do a lot. I mean,
she's like half them, but like my life, is her
right just to be to to be straight with you,
how important she is to me. But one thing, though,
is about four years ago I decided that I needed
(13:47):
to start doing something and I started realizing that we
even the scientists, we don't want to talk. We talk
a lot about how bod this is, but not one
of us. I was actually doing something to fix this problem.
The ways you can do, the ways you can see
scientists doing is buying an electrical car, like that's on,
How magically is going to fix the carbon footprint? What
(14:08):
about your meat? What about your house? So I started
realizing that we have become hypocrites. You know, even among
the most outspoken people on climate change, we are hypocrites.
Like you can look at for instance, Algore. Al Gore
is one of the best persons from climate change. He
takes his private plane to go anywhere. Right, you can
imagine the carbon footprint or that. So I realized that I,
(14:30):
even myself, as a pine, I was becoming hypocrite about this.
So I realized I needed to start working on this,
and I started working with school children. Every now and
then when I did have to have spare time, I
when and gave lectures to the schools. And I realized
that these kids were falling asleep in five minutes of
me talking about climate change. It didn't take me too
(14:50):
long to get those kids to fall asleep. And then
what I decided to do was to close my computer
and try to come up with a method in which
will make this entertaining to the children to do, and
where I realized the tree was was to happen giving
the lecture. So now I go to climb to the
led to the classes, four fifth graders, six creators, and
(15:11):
I have been given the lecture, and that makes them
more excited about it. And I go mind blown by
how much these kids know, how all of these things
made so much sense that even children can pull their
things together to get the picture at the end of
what it means this climate change issue. So now what
I do. I bring my daughter. We meet to all
(15:32):
of these presentations, and I realized that she was paying attention,
and one day she was giving the lecture back to me.
And then I realized, you know what, I'm going to
have my daughter giving these lectures. So now the two
of us go and work together. Every time that we
had to go and give a presentation, even the presentations
that are getting valid to universities, I had my daughter
coming and giving half of the presentation with me. So
(15:53):
we're talking a nine year old girl standing in front
of a hundred two hundred, three hundred people giving a
present intention on climate change. And you will be surprised
and amazed by how much these kids know and that
has been my way to get children to to get
to understand this thing, and in fact, they know so
much that they are the ones explaining the things to
the adults. I wanted to jump on with Jason was saying, though, like,
(16:19):
neither Jason and I are giving lectures to anyone really
about anything that anyone listens to. But how do you
balance the day to day work of parenting with the
knowledge that the world that your kids are going to
inherit it's going to be a profoundly funked up one
with with challenges that we even in the first world,
(16:40):
I can't imagine, well, the thing that there are a
couple of things on what you just say that the
first thing is that those things are not independent. We
don't live on a movie that we can just turn
off whenever we want, or planet is all home, right,
So that's a reality that that's something that people need
to start appreciating. There. For some reasons, somehow we got
detached from that. I guess it's probably the movie the
(17:02):
security that comes from these countries that is plimenting us
obscene that this is so home, this planet is all home.
We have not all the planet to go so When
you do that, you realize that your life is intertwined
with what you have to do to fix this pro
in the parenting, you know. I mean, I think like
maybe just because of the way that I am and
(17:24):
because how deeply your report scared me, It's more like
I am trying to balance not just climate change mitigation,
which is what you're talking about, and what you can
do on an individual level to help um mitigate climate change,
but when all of these catastrophes and crises start happening,
(17:47):
how do you prepare kids for for wildfires and for
droughts and for living in a profoundly insecure, uh more
violent and dangerous world? Like, I mean, this is what
I think about. This is kind of why it's an
interesting topic. I enjoy talking to you. One of the
things that I'm thinking about is I for again to
(18:09):
fight with my kid all the time about doing homework
or saying please, or not beating up his brother or whatever.
And on some level, after reading your study and reading
the New York Times, pizza came out of it. It's
like why bother man like, no, no, no, it is
that this is I mean, it is like imagine not
doing because there are a couple of things that you
(18:30):
need to take on my paper dog, which is the
fun that the choices are between bad and terry. Well,
right now what we're had, But I'm telling you don't
want to be in a terrible situation. So right now,
fortunately we have been so careless that our choices are limited.
But I'm telling you don't want to get the best
the words of those options that we have. No, no, no, no.
I mean my kids will still compost, but I won't
(18:52):
worry about homework because in the world that he's going
to inherit, which is a bad world in the best
case scenario and in the worst case terrible world, those
skills that doesn't matter. Well, well, this is what I'm
trying to do with my daughter, and this is something
that I constantly remind her when when she has to
work harder and story hard which is the fact, baby,
(19:12):
I thought her, Baby, you can change the world man,
and then you you can change the world. Don't think
that you're insignificant for the magnito the problem that you
had out there. So that's the reason why I continue
pushing her to be better at what she does at school,
because those are the leaders that we need to fall
so now and I think that you pot out a
(19:34):
no interesting example though that I want to touch Bridley,
which is this issue between adaptation a mitigation. And it's
similar to the guns. You know, there was a cheering
resently and Santarum sant senator that were beat up by
the president election last time. He came out saying that
the solution to this problem was to teach the kill
(19:55):
the children's CBR after being shot, so that you get
shot you know this CPR. I mean what you get
his point right, But he's suggesting is we're going to
be living with these Schulding's all the time. Let's train
the kids to to to survive on those situations of
a childing. I was thinking, no, that's not exactly what
I would like to do. I want to I would
like to prevent that you're in the first place. So
(20:18):
it's the same situation with climate change here. Do you
know what we might try to adapt to these things
and maybe think that there is no hope to this.
This is the alternative is adaptation. Now, let let me
get back to my analogy of my tyson and imagine
that my tyson and I are friends and every now
and then he keeps beating me. Hepredently right, he just
punched me. But the guys so strong that I just
(20:38):
get bit up by thing every every time by him,
every time that he wants, and I get these bruises.
And he's a close friend of mine. So what is
my solution there? You know what, I'm gonna buy this
protecting gear and I'm carrying this thing around so that
every time that he punched me, I don't get hurt.
That will be adaptation, knowing that you're going to be
living with depending your ask forever, or you can just
(21:01):
tell my ties and you know, one minute, I want
you to stop biting me. I want you to stop
punching me. That is mitigation. So right now, this is
the choices that we have right now, and to be
honest with you and not giving up on the possibility
that we can fix this issue of climate change. I
don't want to be living with that thing biting us
all the time. I don't want to be living with
a constant reminder that I cannot go outdoors because I
(21:23):
might die during a heat wave, that I cannot go
to Florida because I might be I might get killed
by a hurricane or that people in Africa is starting
to that because they cannot produce food. And then now
all of these people is going to migrate to my country.
And now I'm gonna feel old nophobic about these people
because they come here poor and they are going to
create as a situation that why do we have to
(21:45):
accept that at this moment when the difference is where
we can make the difference there. So as a parent again,
I go back to my child and I say, we're
gonna be working as far as we come because we
cannot give up on this. You're clearly passionate man, very
well informed, one amazing researcher. I really as depressing, uh
(22:06):
and difficult to deal with this this paper is. It's
also I think should be required reading for everyone. Um
it is. I wouldn't call it a joy to read,
but it's an important read. And I appreciate you coming
on our show. Aloha, thank you very much. By okay,
(22:29):
but bye guys, thank you my pleasure. Coming up next
a word from our sponsors. Nailed it. I think it
(22:49):
was my fault because I didn't ask a question. But
what I really wanted to maybe I did ask it is,
how do you we asked it, I think that he
I don't think. I ain't got to answer, though, My
question is, how do I talk to my kids about it?
What is a way that you can talk to a
five or seven year old about the fact that this
interwoven fabric of crisis and catastrophe will certainly mean that wildfires,
(23:14):
sea level rise, drought, infrastructure decline, the rise in mental illness, rape, murder,
burglary will happen in their lifetimes. Well, I think what
you're struggling with is candidly the unwieldy nous of it.
All right, this is not like talking to your kids
about jeweling, you know, Well, the unwieldy it's it's it's
(23:35):
unwieldy and deeply dispaar inducing. It could be kids might
find some of it fascinating, though, I think kids are
curious about tidal waves and not when they're looming over.
They're not curious. It's like looming over, you know. But
I'm but I think kids are sort of, you know,
curious about natural phenomena and unnatural phenomena, and uh, they're
(24:00):
a way to make all that sort of stuff interesting,
and they probably are not going to draw all the
existential connections that you're making as a parent as somebody
with you know, theoretically less time on the shelf than
they have much less um. But you know who does
know how to talk about? Yeah? Are you ready for this?
Patrick Cole? Of course? Do you know Patrick? A little bit? Now?
(24:24):
You're doing? But nice job. Patrick is our fathers father Le.
Patrick is father Lee's parenting editor. He answers questions like
I talked to him on Slack all the time and
I asked him, wait a second, Fatherly's parenting editor. Is
that like Sports Illustrated sports editor? Like that sounds kind
(24:44):
of a funny title, Like I don't handle all that
fatherly stuff. I do parenting here well. As you might know,
Fatherly is a panoramic brand handling all aspects of the
fatherhood experience in the modern age, and not all of
it is technical parenting. Patrick's really good at the tactical,
Like what do I do? Actually, Patrick, we should talk
(25:05):
to you at some point later. He has been doing
these stories which like I parented like a Russian parent
for a week and it didn't work. I parented like
a Chinese parent for a week and it did work.
And I just think his fucking kids must be like,
what the fuck is going on with dad? Why is
he making pissing sounds in our ears? I parented like
the Great Santini for a month my kids moved out.
(25:29):
So yeah, so I think Patrick's can help us with that.
Do we have him on the line? Hi? Patrick? So
we just got off the phone with Professor Camillo Moore
from the University of Hawaii who wrote a debilitating, lee
despair inducing report of the impending climate change catastrophe that
will hit us certainly by it'll either be bad or terrible. Um.
(25:56):
And the question that I had coming out of it,
other than like why is anything worth it? Is how
are we supposed to talk to kids about this? Particularly
my kids? Yeah? I mean we are going to saddle
our kids with uh climate that is not going to
(26:21):
be fun for them. We would like to be able
to talk to them about that and get them involved
and UH in changing things. But the problem is is
that the younger children are the more difficult that can be.
And in fact, if you broach this stuff too early,
(26:42):
and if you saddle a child with existential despair catastrophe, yeah,
and if you saddle them with this idea of of
ecological catastrophe, they can actually grow disengaged with the natural
world and and and decide that they would rather be
(27:05):
inside kids basically, and yes, there's a there's a word
for this, and it was coined by a guy named
David Sobell from Antioch University UM and it's called ecophobia.
There's a actual psychological reason why, uh, telling your kids
(27:29):
about these kind of catastrophes does not work, especially when
they're younger, because when they're younger, their brain does not
actually have the capacity to understand time and distance. Right,
So if you say, hey, someday Orlando is going to
be underwater and all, and Nicky Mouse will be dead
(27:51):
someday hit Sundays, just they don't understand, right, you know,
even even kindergarteners, you tell them that something is going
to happen, you know, a day after tomorrow, they don't
understand what that means. This is a lot of why
(28:12):
they get freaked out by stuff on TV, because if
it's on the screen, then it's as good as in
their room. It wouldn't be Mickey Mouse that would be dead.
It would be the human inside the Mickey Mouse costume
who would be dead. But he's already probably dead, already
boxed in by late capitalism. All his hopes and dreams
weren't to be in the middle of a made up character,
(28:33):
another subsidiary of a growth global empire spoon feeding us
entertainment while taking all of our money and mistreating their workers. Yes, exactly,
you yeah, let's um no. But I think that's a
very good point. Well, you know, if you buy this,
do you buy the idea of ecophobia? I do. I do,
(28:58):
actually because m h I do. I do because you
you don't. If if you can't, if you don't understand
that system and you are told that is going to
crumble and there's nothing you can do about it, um,
or you try to do something about it um and
(29:20):
and nothing changes, then I think it's natural to sort
of recoil from that. But there's a solution, there's a
good way to go about it. That's that's the good news.
If you start earlier, and if you're waiting until sort
of fourth or fifth grade, you can you can get
them into this um in a very um uh sort
(29:41):
of incremental way. So when they're in kindergarten, you'll want
to start helping them understand sort of the cycle of
the seasons, right, Um, not not climate, but but you
know m weather and how the seasons change and how
(30:04):
the trees change, and you know sort of the rhythms
of migrations and stuff like this. They're already sort of
a tuned to it because you know, you have holidays
like Easter and Christmas and you know, and other holidays
that are sort of tied with the seasonal passing. So
you can you can help them do projects and sort
(30:24):
of get them kind of keyed into this cyclical nature
of of of our ecosystem. And then as you move
into first grade, UM, you can get kids out sort
of in the garden, helping plant flowers. Um. This raking
of content, raking exactly anything that gets them contact with nature,
(30:52):
their hands in the dirt, leaves with sticks, you know,
looking at bugs, looking at things that grow, having conversations
around those things that you're experiencing, and that sort of
gets them into into, uh, those natural cycles. The next year,
kick it up a notch. You start, uh, you start
(31:15):
growing vegetables or um or or helping more intensely with gardening,
so that they are becoming stewards of sort of a
natural place. Right, they are and well, now you've got
another grade. Then you go into third trade, and then
(31:36):
you get them involved in stuff like, um like cleaning
up their their local environment, right, get them out on
a neighborhood clean up day, um, you know, have them,
have them go up and pick some trash, you know,
sort of get them out into the community so that
they understand this, that that the ecology extends beyond their
(31:57):
their yards and in once you get into fourth and
fifth grade, you can start really getting them into right
then you can start getting them into stuff like recycling
so they can have an even bigger sort of stewardship
and understand where they are connected into this process. And
(32:19):
then by the time you get into fifth grade, you
can start you can actually even give them stuff like like, hey,
we want you to, you know, check out the thermostat.
We want you to you know, monitor the energy that
we're using the house and remind us to turn off
the lights and and connect their uh, connect the rhythms
(32:41):
of the household to you know, the larger ecosystem and
really give them a sense a greater sense of stewardship.
And by that time you will have been able to
talk about the reasons for it. And they won't be
so scared because they'll have a sense of agency. Said
that ring true as well is that he he thinks
(33:04):
one of the best things he can do is empower
his child so she feels that she can make a difference.
I live in a house of very rigid recyclers who
are three and five years old, like my like, are
they prodigies or are they been taught way too early?
And this is going to have a possibly backlash now.
They know that if they don't recycle, they will be
(33:25):
disrespecting their mother. This is true, yes, And then they
tell me when I don't recycle, that you're disrespecting your wife.
Your wife, he referred to their mom, dad, your wife.
Is they're most definitely prodigies, produdies. I would say, yeah,
for sure, answer and you nailed it. Thank you Patrick.
(33:49):
There they're eco warriors. Patrick, Thank you so much for
jumping on the phone with us to talk about this.
I think it's useful, not a fun conversation, but it
doesn't have to be a traumatic one, I mean with
our kids. Sorry, And you know, if all those sales um,
I believe you could probably still stream episodes of Captain Planet.
(34:10):
You know, it's worth a shot. That's true. Cool, Thanks man,
Thank you all right? Do you guys, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason,
We're all going to die. Yeah, wrap up, Jason, We're
all going to die. We are all going to die.
That was a fatherly podcast. I want to thank Jason. Well, yeah,
(34:32):
we are all going to die. That is the truth.
But something relatively therapeutic about this podcast is that, you know,
I went in here today, you know, the big worries
in my life we're you know, I got one kid
at a school with a headline scare. I got one
other kid at a school like pinworms or something. I'm
(34:53):
not worried anymore. Those are just drops in the ocean
compared to the hellscape that's coming their way. Dropped in
the ocean of plastic. I mean, I don't know. I
kind of had the opposite experience coming into here. I
was like, you know, I don't need to sweat the
small stuff because we're all gonna die. But then Camillo
was all like, no, still sweat the small stuff and
(35:13):
we're all gonna die. So now I feel like I
came out of it with and and Patrick is like, yeah, bro,
you talked about it with your kids way too soon,
because I've definitely just talked talked about them with climate change,
I don't necessarily have to buy into that professor's theory
like ecophobia, your kids might be immune, you know, Like
is it like now that I mean, is it like
(35:35):
talking to your kids about like the haunted house on
the hill, Like you know, you don't want to like
make it too crazy because they'll never like they'll move
to the Great Plains. Um No, I don't know. Yeah,
the Patrick thing I feel less into. I feel fine.
I feel like my kids can handle it, and they're
already sucked up in their own beautiful ways anyway. Ecophobia
is a kick ass name for a hardcore band too,
(35:58):
It's true, Yeah, I mean we ecophobia with Anthrax, especially
if there's a lot of reverb, and it's eco phobia
no no reverb, there's no reverb, super clean sound, no reverb. Ecophobia.
I feel less insecure about that and more that I
feel better actually, like I don't. I don't know how
(36:20):
I feel. I'm a mystery to myself, Jason. I do
think that I need to still parent for tomorrow and
today and tonight and be thinking about the long term
future of our kids. I was refreshed, honestly by Camillo's
rolling of the continent are, which was hella impressive, and
(36:42):
his passion and the fact that he actually does walk
the walk as well as talk to Talk, and also
his strange obsession with Mike Tyson. You've been listening to
(37:04):
the Fatherly podcast. My name is Joshua david Stein. My
host is Jason Gay. We default to talking about boxing,
even though I don't feel the need to do that,
but you do it anyway. This show is produced by
Max Savage Levinson. I am also a producer. I want
to be a producer so I can say it. I'm
Joshua david Stein. The executive producer is Andrew Berman. If
(37:29):
you have a parenting question, call this hotline. No one's
called the hotline seven three to four five seven. One
just called the hotline. Mom, I know you're listening, called
the hotline just to tell me that you love me.
The phone call is coming from inside the house. Uh dude,
I don't live with my mom anymore. Thanks for listening. Well,
(37:51):
talk to you next week. God's hilarious. Okay, go as
beginners about mm HM
Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast. I'm your host,
Joshua david Stein, joined by Jason Gay. Hello, Joshua, Hello Jason.
Today we're going to talk about climate change, specifically, how
do you raise your children knowing that they will likely
have to face zombies in the upcoming catastrophic climate crisis?
(00:36):
A good one, right, We're gonna talk to Kamilo mora
professor at the University of Hawaii who wrote a mind
blowingly depressing paper on the topic. The choices are between
bad on very well right now what we had, but
I'm telling you don't want to be in a very
well situation. And Patrick Coleman, Fatherly's own parenting expert, on
how do you talk to kids specifically about this topic
(00:59):
and if you settle them with this idea of of
ecological catastrophe, they can actually grow disengaged with the natural world.
Stay tuned, Welcome Terrifogy podcast. I hope you're enjoying the show.
(01:27):
Are you worried at all as a dad about climate change?
You can answer, honestly, I am not, you know, terribly
far removed as a resident of New York City from
Hurricane was it Sandy? Sandy sandy, which you know, put
the neighborhood adjoining my neighborhood underwater. Ya. I live in
(01:49):
Carol Gardens, New York. So the only thing standing between
three ft of water in my basement was the sunken
Brooklyn Queens Expressway basically serves as a you know, yeah,
the um and you know, got to see up close
and personal some real anguish for residents who live in
those low lying areas. And that was something that a
(02:09):
lot of people, you know, I never thought they'd seen
in their lifetime, you know, as we're talking about all
these kind of like shiny bright objects in Washington and
celebrity all the stuff, that there's this massively massive existential
crisis playing out. So I basically have two things that
I'm thinking about then I think about quite often. One
is what can I do as a parent, but more
(02:31):
so just as a person to make a difference if anything,
How didn't how to not surrender just to nihilism and despair?
Then also, how do I prepare my children to function
in a world that I don't know what it's gonna
look like. But I don't think it's gonna look better,
you know, I don't think they're going to have the security,
(02:53):
the food security, the climate security that we have. What
skills should I pass on to them? And then the
other part of parenting in a time of climate change
is should I bother sweating the small stuff at all?
Like I don't love it when Achilles says, fuck you,
you asshole. But on the other hand, in the things,
(03:18):
the grand scheme of things, who cares? Don't do your homework? Fine,
stay up late. We're gonna be battling for resources and
the world's gonna be burning. Have your fun in the
sun while it's not burning your skin, You know what
I mean. And that's what we're gonna talk to you
Camillo about. He has a daughter as well, so I'm
so curious about a this paper he wrote and be
(03:41):
how he talks to his daughter and see how we
should talk to our sons. Camillo, How are you doing, man? Camillo?
So this is the Fatherly Podcast and we talk about
all things related to raising kids. I kind of explained
it a little bit um earlier. You came into my
(04:07):
orbit from that New York Times piece that ran a
couple of weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago,
about the study that you was were the main author
of in Nature Um the headline was something like it's
going to be like a terror movie. And basically in
the study you talk about what the world is going
(04:29):
to look like if we don't take serious mitigating action
by and broadly, I'm interested in how do you balance
that certitude near certitude of impending doom with raising kids.
But before we bang into that, could you walk us
(04:51):
through a little bit of your paper and some of
the major insights and how you put it together. It's
pretty unique, I think, so. Yeah, yeah, I mean this
paper is pretty unique in the sense that we wanted
to put the evidence together. So when we were reading
we were reading papers here. We are a university, and
all of my a lot of my grand students obviously
(05:13):
want to get a handle of overall knowledge. And one
of the things that we started realizing with most of
the knowledge on climate change is the fact that it's
very vague. You know, when you say a hundred thousand
people are going to die from heat waves, or when
you say sea level rise is gonna destroy houses, livelihoods
and things like that, those are that's that's pretty scary,
(05:34):
But where is the evidence? Where had that happened? That?
Let the scientists make those conclusions. So what we decided
to do on this paper was to collect all of
the evidence of things that had already happened. We're not
talking about what will happen in t any one, We're
talking about what did already happen. And we really we
thought that there might be there might not be too
much evidence, and we came across three thousands scientific papers
(05:58):
pointing out cases of how climate change had already impacted
human life. You know, from people dying during heatwaves, from
people dying during hurricanes and floods. Two people not being
able to drive a car because the roads got damage,
to people not even being able to take a flight
because it's so hot that the air doesn't allow the
(06:18):
planes to take off. To electricity being showed down because
there was my functioning of the system because it was
just too hot. And then we start identifying these things
all over the place, and then you just realize when
you put all of these evidence together, it's like pieces
of a postle that when you put together, you realize,
oh my god, this is really scary stuff. And again
(06:42):
it's not too dramatize the thing, but you just need
to put yourself on the lives of people that pay
the ultimate costs already to climate change. And then it
is when you realize why. In the in the New
York New York Times article, I said that this is
like a terror movies. You just need to put yourself
on the situation of the people that lost their lost
their lives are ready to realize that that was probably
prey scary for them. It's just amount of time before
(07:04):
that comes for us. I think one of the things
that it's so striking about the study is that you
really we've full fabric of how all of the crises
are interrelated. And I think you had mentioned that in
a lot of previous papers, the scope is so narrow
(07:25):
that they might tackle one aspect of it. The researchers
might tackle one aspect, but they don't synthesize or do
a quality quantitative kind of um synthesis of a bunch
of different consequences. And that's what you do so terrifyingly
well in your papers. I'm very glad that you point
(07:46):
out that that issue, the fact that all of these
things come together and are connected. So normally what happens
we climate change we normally associate with increases in temperature,
and we normally relate to a polar barry in the
in the Arctic on a popsicle there, right. That's kind
of the postal child of climate change, just the increasing temperature. However,
(08:06):
one of the things that happens is that when you
increase temperature, the wire that is in the soil evaporates,
and then you lead to droughts. When the water runs
out on those places, the heat that comes from the
song has nowhere to go, and then you ended up
having heat waves. And when you had droughts and he waved,
then you had the prime conditions for wildfires. So you
(08:27):
had three things that are connected to each other that
will happen exactly in the same place. California as an
example of that, they have gone through the longest drought
in record to he was that force people to stay
indoors to so of the massive wildfires that are on
record as well. So we're talking about three climatic hazards
happening simultaneously as a consequence of us just doing one thing,
(08:50):
which is to increase the temperature of our planet. The
analogy that I give to this this is like me
getting into a fight with my types on Arnolds's negative
best rest alone. At the same time, I don't want
to interrupt you, but but just for the record, Joshua
probably thinks he could win a fight against Schwarzenegger st
alone get quite a brawny, brawling guy. But two thirds
(09:16):
of them now, and they're I think they're all in
their sixties. But Camilla, like hearing you talk about this, right,
it sounds it's it's dire. I don't think anyone thinks
it's not dire. Do you ever worry about And then
we're gonna jump a little bit more into the parenting
aspect of it. But do you ever worry that you'll
be a Cassandra? Because it's just too much for people
(09:39):
to understanding. Yes, that's the hard part for the scientists. Unfortunately,
it's not it's not going to make it an any
less true, you know what I mean? Why is it
that now for us to cure from this problem, the
solution is to not talk about the problem. This is
like me having a concert that's been caused by mere
(10:00):
smoking tobacco. And now it turns out that talking about
the continent the talac, which is too hard to me.
Oh my god, I get all frightened it by it,
so let's not talk about it, and let's wait for
the best. And and that is the attitude that we're
taking with climate change, which is never a good time
to talk about it. When these things are happening and
killing people. The recommendation of the politicians is no, no, no,
(10:21):
this is not the best time. So when is the
best time. One of the points you make in the paper,
which I think is well taken, is that in developed
countries you see the effects of climate change, primary primarily
being loss of economic economic laws, whereas the costs of
climate change even now in developing countries is a loss
(10:42):
of life. And because we live in a developed part
of a developed um country, I think we experience it
as either inconvenience, which you're right, the blackout was inconvenient,
that heat wave was inconvenient, or loss of economic or
economic laws. Um, but we're not experiencing that dramatic loss
(11:04):
of life which is already happening around the world. Yes, well,
that is again an unfortunate situation though, because I mean, yeah,
I mean the thing is that you look at the
United States, a hundred people die on the wildfires in
in California, you know, and maybe I think that it
was like close to three thousand people die on the
(11:24):
hurricane in Puerto Rico. That's a hurricane. Could to have
been in Philippines or Indonesia, it will have easily be
a hundred thousand people killed there. So just for you
to tell the difference between those the same disturbans happening
in one place and another. Now, unfortunately for the United States,
we're talking losses of billions of dollars though, so it's
(11:46):
kind of interesting how those economic impacts we're talking billions
of dollars in losses don't dramificately down to people paying
more so because unfortunately we had subsidies and economic reliefs
that kind of help soften the blow from these these
store buances there. But again, just creating these comforts in
(12:09):
the devil a world about the issues of climate change,
and you are totally right, people don't feel it as
is strong because fortunately for us in the first world,
we are very resilient to it. But that doesn't mean
that it's cheap and that they problem is getting fixed.
We'll be right back after a brief word from our sponsors.
(12:41):
Now you have laid out a very compelling scenario, and
we are hopefully adult enough here as hosts and with
our listeners to appreciate what you've laid out. We're also
fathers of some very young children who blessed them are
not fully aware of the steaks that confront their world.
(13:03):
And I'm curious what you think about that with regards
of the future. And I believe you're a parent yourself,
and what how how it informs the way that your
parent because you know, obviously you're in a situation where
you want to inform as many people as possible that
you know the stakes here, and you obviously have done that,
But closer to home, how do you handle it? Not
(13:26):
as it shape the way your parents? So about three
years ago I had a daughter myself. She's living years
old now, and we obviously we do a lot. I mean,
she's like half them, but like my life, is her
right just to be to to be straight with you,
how important she is to me. But one thing, though,
is about four years ago I decided that I needed
(13:47):
to start doing something and I started realizing that we
even the scientists, we don't want to talk. We talk
a lot about how bod this is, but not one
of us. I was actually doing something to fix this problem.
The ways you can do, the ways you can see
scientists doing is buying an electrical car, like that's on,
How magically is going to fix the carbon footprint? What
(14:08):
about your meat? What about your house? So I started
realizing that we have become hypocrites. You know, even among
the most outspoken people on climate change, we are hypocrites.
Like you can look at for instance, Algore. Al Gore
is one of the best persons from climate change. He
takes his private plane to go anywhere. Right, you can
imagine the carbon footprint or that. So I realized that I,
(14:30):
even myself, as a pine, I was becoming hypocrite about this.
So I realized I needed to start working on this,
and I started working with school children. Every now and
then when I did have to have spare time, I
when and gave lectures to the schools. And I realized
that these kids were falling asleep in five minutes of
me talking about climate change. It didn't take me too
(14:50):
long to get those kids to fall asleep. And then
what I decided to do was to close my computer
and try to come up with a method in which
will make this entertaining to the children to do, and
where I realized the tree was was to happen giving
the lecture. So now I go to climb to the
led to the classes, four fifth graders, six creators, and
(15:11):
I have been given the lecture, and that makes them
more excited about it. And I go mind blown by
how much these kids know, how all of these things
made so much sense that even children can pull their
things together to get the picture at the end of
what it means this climate change issue. So now what
I do. I bring my daughter. We meet to all
(15:32):
of these presentations, and I realized that she was paying attention,
and one day she was giving the lecture back to me.
And then I realized, you know what, I'm going to
have my daughter giving these lectures. So now the two
of us go and work together. Every time that we
had to go and give a presentation, even the presentations
that are getting valid to universities, I had my daughter
coming and giving half of the presentation with me. So
(15:53):
we're talking a nine year old girl standing in front
of a hundred two hundred, three hundred people giving a
present intention on climate change. And you will be surprised
and amazed by how much these kids know and that
has been my way to get children to to get
to understand this thing, and in fact, they know so
much that they are the ones explaining the things to
the adults. I wanted to jump on with Jason was saying, though, like,
(16:19):
neither Jason and I are giving lectures to anyone really
about anything that anyone listens to. But how do you
balance the day to day work of parenting with the
knowledge that the world that your kids are going to
inherit it's going to be a profoundly funked up one
with with challenges that we even in the first world,
(16:40):
I can't imagine, well, the thing that there are a
couple of things on what you just say that the
first thing is that those things are not independent. We
don't live on a movie that we can just turn
off whenever we want, or planet is all home, right,
So that's a reality that that's something that people need
to start appreciating. There. For some reasons, somehow we got
detached from that. I guess it's probably the movie the
(17:02):
security that comes from these countries that is plimenting us
obscene that this is so home, this planet is all home.
We have not all the planet to go so When
you do that, you realize that your life is intertwined
with what you have to do to fix this pro
in the parenting, you know. I mean, I think like
maybe just because of the way that I am and
(17:24):
because how deeply your report scared me, It's more like
I am trying to balance not just climate change mitigation,
which is what you're talking about, and what you can
do on an individual level to help um mitigate climate change,
but when all of these catastrophes and crises start happening,
(17:47):
how do you prepare kids for for wildfires and for
droughts and for living in a profoundly insecure, uh more
violent and dangerous world? Like, I mean, this is what
I think about. This is kind of why it's an
interesting topic. I enjoy talking to you. One of the
things that I'm thinking about is I for again to
(18:09):
fight with my kid all the time about doing homework
or saying please, or not beating up his brother or whatever.
And on some level, after reading your study and reading
the New York Times, pizza came out of it. It's
like why bother man like, no, no, no, it is
that this is I mean, it is like imagine not
doing because there are a couple of things that you
(18:30):
need to take on my paper dog, which is the
fun that the choices are between bad and terry. Well,
right now what we're had, But I'm telling you don't
want to be in a terrible situation. So right now,
fortunately we have been so careless that our choices are limited.
But I'm telling you don't want to get the best
the words of those options that we have. No, no, no, no.
I mean my kids will still compost, but I won't
(18:52):
worry about homework because in the world that he's going
to inherit, which is a bad world in the best
case scenario and in the worst case terrible world, those
skills that doesn't matter. Well, well, this is what I'm
trying to do with my daughter, and this is something
that I constantly remind her when when she has to
work harder and story hard which is the fact, baby,
(19:12):
I thought her, Baby, you can change the world man,
and then you you can change the world. Don't think
that you're insignificant for the magnito the problem that you
had out there. So that's the reason why I continue
pushing her to be better at what she does at school,
because those are the leaders that we need to fall
so now and I think that you pot out a
(19:34):
no interesting example though that I want to touch Bridley,
which is this issue between adaptation a mitigation. And it's
similar to the guns. You know, there was a cheering
resently and Santarum sant senator that were beat up by
the president election last time. He came out saying that
the solution to this problem was to teach the kill
(19:55):
the children's CBR after being shot, so that you get
shot you know this CPR. I mean what you get
his point right, But he's suggesting is we're going to
be living with these Schulding's all the time. Let's train
the kids to to to survive on those situations of
a childing. I was thinking, no, that's not exactly what
I would like to do. I want to I would
like to prevent that you're in the first place. So
(20:18):
it's the same situation with climate change here. Do you
know what we might try to adapt to these things
and maybe think that there is no hope to this.
This is the alternative is adaptation. Now, let let me
get back to my analogy of my tyson and imagine
that my tyson and I are friends and every now
and then he keeps beating me. Hepredently right, he just
punched me. But the guys so strong that I just
(20:38):
get bit up by thing every every time by him,
every time that he wants, and I get these bruises.
And he's a close friend of mine. So what is
my solution there? You know what, I'm gonna buy this
protecting gear and I'm carrying this thing around so that
every time that he punched me, I don't get hurt.
That will be adaptation, knowing that you're going to be
living with depending your ask forever, or you can just
(21:01):
tell my ties and you know, one minute, I want
you to stop biting me. I want you to stop
punching me. That is mitigation. So right now, this is
the choices that we have right now, and to be
honest with you and not giving up on the possibility
that we can fix this issue of climate change. I
don't want to be living with that thing biting us
all the time. I don't want to be living with
a constant reminder that I cannot go outdoors because I
(21:23):
might die during a heat wave, that I cannot go
to Florida because I might be I might get killed
by a hurricane or that people in Africa is starting
to that because they cannot produce food. And then now
all of these people is going to migrate to my country.
And now I'm gonna feel old nophobic about these people
because they come here poor and they are going to
create as a situation that why do we have to
(21:45):
accept that at this moment when the difference is where
we can make the difference there. So as a parent again,
I go back to my child and I say, we're
gonna be working as far as we come because we
cannot give up on this. You're clearly passionate man, very
well informed, one amazing researcher. I really as depressing, uh
(22:06):
and difficult to deal with this this paper is. It's
also I think should be required reading for everyone. Um
it is. I wouldn't call it a joy to read,
but it's an important read. And I appreciate you coming
on our show. Aloha, thank you very much. By okay,
(22:29):
but bye guys, thank you my pleasure. Coming up next
a word from our sponsors. Nailed it. I think it
(22:49):
was my fault because I didn't ask a question. But
what I really wanted to maybe I did ask it is,
how do you we asked it, I think that he
I don't think. I ain't got to answer, though, My
question is, how do I talk to my kids about it?
What is a way that you can talk to a
five or seven year old about the fact that this
interwoven fabric of crisis and catastrophe will certainly mean that wildfires,
(23:14):
sea level rise, drought, infrastructure decline, the rise in mental illness, rape, murder,
burglary will happen in their lifetimes. Well, I think what
you're struggling with is candidly the unwieldy nous of it.
All right, this is not like talking to your kids
about jeweling, you know, Well, the unwieldy it's it's it's
(23:35):
unwieldy and deeply dispaar inducing. It could be kids might
find some of it fascinating, though, I think kids are
curious about tidal waves and not when they're looming over.
They're not curious. It's like looming over, you know. But
I'm but I think kids are sort of, you know,
curious about natural phenomena and unnatural phenomena, and uh, they're
(24:00):
a way to make all that sort of stuff interesting,
and they probably are not going to draw all the
existential connections that you're making as a parent as somebody
with you know, theoretically less time on the shelf than
they have much less um. But you know who does
know how to talk about? Yeah? Are you ready for this?
Patrick Cole? Of course? Do you know Patrick? A little bit? Now?
(24:24):
You're doing? But nice job. Patrick is our fathers father Le.
Patrick is father Lee's parenting editor. He answers questions like
I talked to him on Slack all the time and
I asked him, wait a second, Fatherly's parenting editor. Is
that like Sports Illustrated sports editor? Like that sounds kind
(24:44):
of a funny title, Like I don't handle all that
fatherly stuff. I do parenting here well. As you might know,
Fatherly is a panoramic brand handling all aspects of the
fatherhood experience in the modern age, and not all of
it is technical parenting. Patrick's really good at the tactical,
Like what do I do? Actually, Patrick, we should talk
(25:05):
to you at some point later. He has been doing
these stories which like I parented like a Russian parent
for a week and it didn't work. I parented like
a Chinese parent for a week and it did work.
And I just think his fucking kids must be like,
what the fuck is going on with dad? Why is
he making pissing sounds in our ears? I parented like
the Great Santini for a month my kids moved out.
(25:29):
So yeah, so I think Patrick's can help us with that.
Do we have him on the line? Hi? Patrick? So
we just got off the phone with Professor Camillo Moore
from the University of Hawaii who wrote a debilitating, lee
despair inducing report of the impending climate change catastrophe that
will hit us certainly by it'll either be bad or terrible. Um.
(25:56):
And the question that I had coming out of it,
other than like why is anything worth it? Is how
are we supposed to talk to kids about this? Particularly
my kids? Yeah? I mean we are going to saddle
our kids with uh climate that is not going to
(26:21):
be fun for them. We would like to be able
to talk to them about that and get them involved
and UH in changing things. But the problem is is
that the younger children are the more difficult that can be.
And in fact, if you broach this stuff too early,
(26:42):
and if you saddle a child with existential despair catastrophe, yeah,
and if you saddle them with this idea of of
ecological catastrophe, they can actually grow disengaged with the natural
world and and and decide that they would rather be
(27:05):
inside kids basically, and yes, there's a there's a word
for this, and it was coined by a guy named
David Sobell from Antioch University UM and it's called ecophobia.
There's a actual psychological reason why, uh, telling your kids
(27:29):
about these kind of catastrophes does not work, especially when
they're younger, because when they're younger, their brain does not
actually have the capacity to understand time and distance. Right,
So if you say, hey, someday Orlando is going to
be underwater and all, and Nicky Mouse will be dead
(27:51):
someday hit Sundays, just they don't understand, right, you know,
even even kindergarteners, you tell them that something is going
to happen, you know, a day after tomorrow, they don't
understand what that means. This is a lot of why
(28:12):
they get freaked out by stuff on TV, because if
it's on the screen, then it's as good as in
their room. It wouldn't be Mickey Mouse that would be dead.
It would be the human inside the Mickey Mouse costume
who would be dead. But he's already probably dead, already
boxed in by late capitalism. All his hopes and dreams
weren't to be in the middle of a made up character,
(28:33):
another subsidiary of a growth global empire spoon feeding us
entertainment while taking all of our money and mistreating their workers. Yes, exactly,
you yeah, let's um no. But I think that's a
very good point. Well, you know, if you buy this,
do you buy the idea of ecophobia? I do. I do,
(28:58):
actually because m h I do. I do because you
you don't. If if you can't, if you don't understand
that system and you are told that is going to
crumble and there's nothing you can do about it, um,
or you try to do something about it um and
(29:20):
and nothing changes, then I think it's natural to sort
of recoil from that. But there's a solution, there's a
good way to go about it. That's that's the good news.
If you start earlier, and if you're waiting until sort
of fourth or fifth grade, you can you can get
them into this um in a very um uh sort
(29:41):
of incremental way. So when they're in kindergarten, you'll want
to start helping them understand sort of the cycle of
the seasons, right, Um, not not climate, but but you
know m weather and how the seasons change and how
(30:04):
the trees change, and you know sort of the rhythms
of migrations and stuff like this. They're already sort of
a tuned to it because you know, you have holidays
like Easter and Christmas and you know, and other holidays
that are sort of tied with the seasonal passing. So
you can you can help them do projects and sort
(30:24):
of get them kind of keyed into this cyclical nature
of of of our ecosystem. And then as you move
into first grade, UM, you can get kids out sort
of in the garden, helping plant flowers. Um. This raking
of content, raking exactly anything that gets them contact with nature,
(30:52):
their hands in the dirt, leaves with sticks, you know,
looking at bugs, looking at things that grow, having conversations
around those things that you're experiencing, and that sort of
gets them into into, uh, those natural cycles. The next year,
kick it up a notch. You start, uh, you start
(31:15):
growing vegetables or um or or helping more intensely with gardening,
so that they are becoming stewards of sort of a
natural place. Right, they are and well, now you've got
another grade. Then you go into third trade, and then
(31:36):
you get them involved in stuff like, um like cleaning
up their their local environment, right, get them out on
a neighborhood clean up day, um, you know, have them,
have them go up and pick some trash, you know,
sort of get them out into the community so that
they understand this, that that the ecology extends beyond their
(31:57):
their yards and in once you get into fourth and
fifth grade, you can start really getting them into right
then you can start getting them into stuff like recycling
so they can have an even bigger sort of stewardship
and understand where they are connected into this process. And
(32:19):
then by the time you get into fifth grade, you
can start you can actually even give them stuff like like, hey,
we want you to, you know, check out the thermostat.
We want you to you know, monitor the energy that
we're using the house and remind us to turn off
the lights and and connect their uh, connect the rhythms
(32:41):
of the household to you know, the larger ecosystem and
really give them a sense a greater sense of stewardship.
And by that time you will have been able to
talk about the reasons for it. And they won't be
so scared because they'll have a sense of agency. Said
that ring true as well is that he he thinks
(33:04):
one of the best things he can do is empower
his child so she feels that she can make a difference.
I live in a house of very rigid recyclers who
are three and five years old, like my like, are
they prodigies or are they been taught way too early?
And this is going to have a possibly backlash now.
They know that if they don't recycle, they will be
(33:25):
disrespecting their mother. This is true, yes, And then they
tell me when I don't recycle, that you're disrespecting your wife.
Your wife, he referred to their mom, dad, your wife.
Is they're most definitely prodigies, produdies. I would say, yeah,
for sure, answer and you nailed it. Thank you Patrick.
(33:49):
There they're eco warriors. Patrick, Thank you so much for
jumping on the phone with us to talk about this.
I think it's useful, not a fun conversation, but it
doesn't have to be a traumatic one, I mean with
our kids. Sorry, And you know, if all those sales um,
I believe you could probably still stream episodes of Captain Planet.
(34:10):
You know, it's worth a shot. That's true. Cool, Thanks man,
Thank you all right? Do you guys, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason,
We're all going to die. Yeah, wrap up, Jason, We're
all going to die. We are all going to die.
That was a fatherly podcast. I want to thank Jason. Well, yeah,
(34:32):
we are all going to die. That is the truth.
But something relatively therapeutic about this podcast is that, you know,
I went in here today, you know, the big worries
in my life we're you know, I got one kid
at a school with a headline scare. I got one
other kid at a school like pinworms or something. I'm
(34:53):
not worried anymore. Those are just drops in the ocean
compared to the hellscape that's coming their way. Dropped in
the ocean of plastic. I mean, I don't know. I
kind of had the opposite experience coming into here. I
was like, you know, I don't need to sweat the
small stuff because we're all gonna die. But then Camillo
was all like, no, still sweat the small stuff and
(35:13):
we're all gonna die. So now I feel like I
came out of it with and and Patrick is like, yeah, bro,
you talked about it with your kids way too soon,
because I've definitely just talked talked about them with climate change,
I don't necessarily have to buy into that professor's theory
like ecophobia, your kids might be immune, you know, Like
is it like now that I mean, is it like
(35:35):
talking to your kids about like the haunted house on
the hill, Like you know, you don't want to like
make it too crazy because they'll never like they'll move
to the Great Plains. Um No, I don't know. Yeah,
the Patrick thing I feel less into. I feel fine.
I feel like my kids can handle it, and they're
already sucked up in their own beautiful ways anyway. Ecophobia
is a kick ass name for a hardcore band too,
(35:58):
It's true, Yeah, I mean we ecophobia with Anthrax, especially
if there's a lot of reverb, and it's eco phobia
no no reverb, there's no reverb, super clean sound, no reverb. Ecophobia.
I feel less insecure about that and more that I
feel better actually, like I don't. I don't know how
(36:20):
I feel. I'm a mystery to myself, Jason. I do
think that I need to still parent for tomorrow and
today and tonight and be thinking about the long term
future of our kids. I was refreshed, honestly by Camillo's
rolling of the continent are, which was hella impressive, and
(36:42):
his passion and the fact that he actually does walk
the walk as well as talk to Talk, and also
his strange obsession with Mike Tyson. You've been listening to
(37:04):
the Fatherly podcast. My name is Joshua david Stein. My
host is Jason Gay. We default to talking about boxing,
even though I don't feel the need to do that,
but you do it anyway. This show is produced by
Max Savage Levinson. I am also a producer. I want
to be a producer so I can say it. I'm
Joshua david Stein. The executive producer is Andrew Berman. If
(37:29):
you have a parenting question, call this hotline. No one's
called the hotline seven three to four five seven. One
just called the hotline. Mom, I know you're listening, called
the hotline just to tell me that you love me.
The phone call is coming from inside the house. Uh dude,
I don't live with my mom anymore. Thanks for listening. Well,
(37:51):
talk to you next week. God's hilarious. Okay, go as
beginners about mm HM
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