This evening I plummeted through the dark in Milli-Van in the misty rain, with Peanut sleeping and Boodge full of questions. We were on our way home from visits in the city, and I was trying to listen to the CBC's "The Current" (you can listen to the episode here). Anna Maria Tremonti was interviewing the opposition party environment critics, and Environment Minister Peter Kent, about Canada's pull-out of the Kyoto Accord, and their shameful (in my humble opinion) representation of our country and more importantly, our children, in Durban. My children. Listening to such discussions, I struggle not to go to a dark place, envisioning my children as adults in a post-apocalyptic, uninhabitable world. Tell me I'm not the only one?
From the back seat: "Mummy? What's camrit change?"
"Climate change? It's, um, it's changes in our world's weather, in the...."
"No, CAMRIT change. CAMRIT change." He insisted.
"Well, camrit change doesn't exist, what they're talking about on the radio is called climate change." I was happy to buy some time. I didn't want to have to explain climate change to my son. What could I tell him these people on the radio were saying about his potential future? That millions may die, billions would suffer, the earth become a hostile place.
"What's climate change?"
"Well, it's the weather of our world...our world is getting hotter, that's climate change."
"Why's our world getting hotter?"
"It's getting hotter because of...of things we are doing--people are doing. We're using the earth too much, building and driving a lot and wasting and that is making the earth hotter. It's not good for the world."
"Why's it not good for the world."
"Because, it hurts the earth." Yes, I copped out on a circular answer. And then I veered. "That's why we have to do our best to recycle and compost, and not waste and not buy things we don't need. That's how we can help the earth."
He stopped asking questions then and I was glad. Now the Conservative Environment Minister was on the radio, smoothing out his actions over the past two weeks. I drifted back to my own thoughts, checking regularly in the rear view mirror to see if Boodge was finally falling asleep. He wasn't. I hoped this wasn't going to be one of those drives home where he never goes to sleep, gets more and more punchy, and arrives at the house drunk-tired. It was already past 8:30.
Then from the backseat. "Mummy? Um, MUMMY!!" He is shouting. I'd told him he has to speak up in Milli-Van, it's hard to hear him over the buzz of the road and heaters.
"Yes, honey?"
"MUMMY! I'm trying not to have too many farts."
"What? Are you farting?"
"No, I'm trying not to have too many farts. I don't want to have too many farts."
"Why? Do you have to poo?" That would surely keep him up. Ugh.
"No, Mummy. I'm trying not to have too many farts for our earth. To help the world from getting hotter."
How can my heart break a little while I laugh like that? And where do we go from there? I told him his farts were surely not going to be the problem and he could fart as much as he wanted, people have been farting for all time and that wasn't going to hurt the earth. And I couldn't resist telling him that if he wanted to help the earth, one way was to not get a lot of plastic toys or other things that would just end up in the garbage one day.
I'm pretty sure this will not be our last discussion about climate change. People dread the "sex" talks with their kids, but to me, those seem easy. This, the fact that our mother planet is in jeopardy, that his generation could see some drastic, difficult changes...this is hard. I need to think about what to say to him, what to teach him to help him live in this possible future, or avoid it. And to allow him to fart freely, and keep delighting me and making me laugh.
Help me, peoples? What do you tell your children?
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