Misguided view
It is disappointing to see Stuff give a platform to Kids being made into climate zealots (Jan 23), paranoid, scare-mongering drivel from Karl du Fresne about the Ministry of Education’s new climate change teaching resource. I thought Stuff aimed to lead the way on climate reporting?
Du Fresne implies that the programme is compulsory. It’s not. It’s a teaching resource which can be used or not. Climate change has been able to be taught as part of the curriculum for years. After all, we teach science, don’t we?
Students have been calling for more climate change education, and teachers have been calling for
new and better resources to support this. This resource is science-based, and, importantly and responsibly, places great emphasis on both taking positive action (a good antidote for climate distress) and handling negative emotions associated with the climate crisis.
Du Fresne maintains this resource imposes ‘‘adult anxieties and political convictions on the young’’. He should pay more attention: a raft of recent research suggests that global heating and its impacts are happening faster than IPCC predictions.
The Australian bushfires are a mere taste of things to come. But du Fresne would prefer that young people were kept in the dark about their future. He wants to ‘‘debate’’ the science – a well-worn strategy of the fossil fuel industry, National and other climate deniers. Cordelia Lockett, Auckland
Like Karl du Fresne I’m part of the Boomer generation, share some it’s
views on social issues, love to challenge received opinion, have earned good money from writing, and have lived in provincial New Zealand. But I couldn’t disagree more with his column comparing climate change education with religious zealotry.
My guess is the difference started with my parents, who both took degrees in chemistry before becoming farmers. With their encouragement I became a DSIR scientist, then a politician, then a senior policy analyst.
Everything I’ve learned in the last 60 years tells me that climate change has now become an existential threat to life on Planet Earth, an even greater threat than nuclear war.
There’s nothing religious about my beliefs, nor in my support for children being better educated about the risks facing them. We educate them about the risks of crossing the road, taking drugs, driving dangerously, catching diseases, and consorting with violent criminals. Does Karl Du Fresne oppose those programmes too? Or is it only climate change warnings he rejects?
His choice of phrases such as ‘‘politically charged dogma’’, ‘‘heavily freighted with ideology’’, and ‘‘New Age gibberish’’ owe nothing to science and do nothing to support his argument.
Bill Sutton, Napier