{"id":2171,"date":"2016-07-18T18:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T18:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2016-07-18T18:00:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T18:00:19","slug":"making-it-happy-kids-re-imagining-climate-change-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2016\/07\/18\/making-it-happy-kids-re-imagining-climate-change-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Making It Happy: Kids Re-Imagining Climate Change Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"itg_blog1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside the Greenhouse<\/em><\/a>
\nby Meridith Richter<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are those black clouds with sad faces on them?\u201d I ask an eleven-year-old participant of the SHINE: A Musical Performance for Youth Authored Resilience CU Science Discovery camp. We\u2019re looking down at the massive, hand-painted timeline the kids at the camp have created to illustrate the history of the Earth. It starts 300 million years ago in the Pennsylvanian Period, where the kids have painted trees and vines to portray a lush, vegetation-covered planet. The timeline moves through each subsequent period all the way to the present, where the ominously dark clouds in question hover over towering smokestacks and sputtering cars. \u201cOh that\u2019s the present day. It\u2019s kind of sad because we have a lot of carbon in the air and it\u2019s not really that happy. But then we have the future,\u201d she says, pointing to just beyond the gloomy scene, \u201cwhich is happy if we can make it happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In complete contrast to its neighboring present-day image, the kids have represented the future as colorful flowers under fluffy white clouds and a smiling sun. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of windmills, happy flowers, and a lot of solar panels,\u201d she goes on to explain. It\u2019s a wonderful visualization of the camp as a whole. These kids have been asked to imagine solutions that will make their cities and their world more resilient to the inevitable and foreboding effects of climate change. They\u2019ve been asked to brainstorm sustainable methods of energy supply, food production, and consumption of material goods. That\u2019s a difficult and scary enough task to make a room full of college-age students feel overwhelmed, let alone a room full of boisterous elementary-age children. Yet in response, these kids didn\u2019t let the fear of the bad that could happen dissuade them from envisioning all the good that could happen. They weren\u2019t afraid to paint a future that vibrantly prevails over the challenges we face today. And they know a future like that \u201cis happy if we can make it happy.\u201d Read more \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside the Greenhouse by Meridith Richter \u201cWhat are those black clouds with sad faces on them?\u201d I ask an eleven-year-old participant of the SHINE: A Musical Performance for Youth Authored Resilience CU Science Discovery camp. We\u2019re looking down at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-29 23:53:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}