Childhood, Climate Change and Human Agency

Abstract

The issues that arise at the conjunction of childhood and climate change are complex. They touch on the oldest themes of bio-politics; relations between human and non-human life; the nature of human agency and its traction and influence in the world; the possibilities for deliberate intervention in human and non-human activity. Over the past couple of centuries at least, children have had these themes projected onto their lives and childhood itself has been shaped by its use as a political and scientific test-bed for their examination. Looking to futures, these themes also have profound practical and ethical implications for children, for the distribution of resources essential to life and for intergenerational justice and generational succession (Facer 2011). So as I examine climate change and childhood together, I will advance an argument about the roles that children and childhood can play in responding to climate change. Central to this is my concern that children be seen not only as the resources out of which futures are built — so many bodies to be healthily grown, so many minds to be cultivated — but also as active and creative participants in the construction of futures. To this extent I’m clearly going to be building on views of children as agents that have been developed in recent decades in childhood studies.