Inspired by recent young people being outspoken, and the feeling I get that even sheltered kids have a good chance these days to be exposed to and absorb concern by osmosis, even if it’s not shared by their parents.
If you have/had kids in your life, and they expressed concern about the future, what would you tell them? How would you guide their related life decisions (future job, family, education)?
And yes, this includes you skeptics too!
Are you asking about our own children, or just children that we may be acquainted with?
For my own children, I’ll let them know that the more extreme things they’ll hear on the subject are hyperbole / exaggeration and that they don’t need to worry about them. As for guiding their future life decisions on work, family, and education:
work: I expect and hope that they’ll work to support themselves and their families, in whatever honorable profession they can find enjoyment in.
family: My family has brought me some of the most joyful experiences and meaningful relationships of my entire life. I hope they’re lucky enough to have a family of their own some day.
education: I’ll encourage them to pursue educational achievements that allow them to do 1) above and also learn and grow (intellectually) and immerse themselves in topics that interest them. While they’re young, my main focus is on developing the habit of reading.
For other children I may have a connection with, the same things, but less forcefully / frequently.
Explain to them that the change will happen slowly over the course of many decades or a few centuries and that they will pretty easily adjust to them, as people have been adjusting to change as long as people have been humans.
I’m sorry.
I’d tell them that I hope their generation is less selfish, short-sighted, and materialistic than mine. And to realize that everything has associated costs. I’d also assist them in developing a love, appreciation, and respect for nature.
Tell them we are learning to terraform.
Really I would talk about the dirty part of progress in it’s early stages which we are still in, but also transitioning to hopefully something more stable. Compare it to when we were all babies and pooping our diapers. As we grow we learn and are able to do things cleaner, however somewhere rotting in a landfill still are the remnants of our messy past. In terms of climate, we have caused a change to our home, it is something that we are going to have to learn how to deal with and manage, it terms of our society and our planet. Give them hope that once again we can learn to live more in harmony with nature, our planet and perhaps better then before, live in harmony with each other.
I’d tell them that science knew there were problems, but “world leaders” dragged their feet and now it may be too late. I’d tell them that I’m glad that I won’t be around when the shit hits the fan, and I hope that their generation can make a difference.
I would tell them that they had better visit the few remaining costal cities…
I hope you will indeed follow through on this. As I’ve previously told Chief Pedant and other climate “skeptics” on this board, it’s important for people who oppose action on climate change to be honest with their children/grandchildren about their opinions, so the younger generations as they grow up can have a better understanding of how the whole situation came about.
Plus it will give them a whole fund of “clueless older relative” humorous anecdotes to share with their friends in the future, and all young people need some of those. 
*"Yeah, my Dad was constantly drumming it into us that we should just ignore extreme claims about climate-change impacts, but he refused to talk about the realities of them!
“I tried to talk to him once about my friend Ellen’s parents wanting to move to better jobs in South Florida and her worries that their location would be hard hit by sea level rise. And all Dad would say was ‘It’s important that Ellen’s parents are working to support their family. Ellen is lucky to have a good family with parents who work for her. That’s what I want for you someday.’ You just couldn’t get him to openly acknowledge reality when it came to climate-change problems.”*
You get close to something I was specifically wondering about with this topic (there were others, but they were a bit glib): if you’re nihilistic, and you feel science supports it, what would you REALLY tell the next generation? Is there harm telling them they’re doomed if you genuinely think so? (I also wonder how the passionate youth, like the Swedish young lady, would react to being told that, but that’s probably out of scope here.)
I think they are doomed, but I would present the best case scenario; that maybe scientists will come up with an as yet unknown way to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Sadly, I don’t believe there will be enough time to find off-earth solutions.
I’d tell them the truth: Things are about to get a whole lot worse. Canada real estate is about to become real valuable. Tropical places won’t be livable much longer.
I hope to be able to tell the Firebug that we didn’t totally fuck up the world he’ll spend most of his life in, before he even got old enough to vote and have a say in the matter.
I guess we’ll find out all too soon.
I’d tell them not to worry about it too much. Humans are an adaptable species.
There’s no way I’d put the fear of god into a child’s head.
Ahhh, you raised yours as I raised mine; atheistically.
I guess we’ve got different priorities. I don’t think having “the talk” about climate change with my children is remotely “important”, but I don’t have any intention of hiding my views from my family.
This isn’t an important thing, does nothing but confuse and bore the child, is not something people will generally remember anyway, is unfair and pointless because no one individual is deciding how this is going to go, and just saying it is obviously the most absurd virtue-signalling.
I might discuss the horrible winters we used to have here in the midwest or that my grandmother has seen it snow in South Dakota every month of the year except August. We dont have those terrible blizzards and subzero temperatures anymore.
LOL
Well, when you are old and grey, beaches may be significantly more narrow. And you might have to run your air conditioning more in summer (but your heating less in winter.) There will be some parts of the world that are less usable, and some others that will be more usable. Your grandchildren or great-grandchildren may life in a world with more extensive ocean shallows (great for fishing) and be more free of the ice-age conditions we have been living under our whole human existence. The Earth will be more like past times well known for lush tropical forests and the land and sea richly populated by a large variety of animals (many of them vastly larger than the stunted runts in our half-frozen world.) So enjoy!