Children, Place and Sustainability

Abstract

Mirabelle (15) and Kelly (16) were interviewed for this final chapter of our book in order to begin and end with the views of young people. We started the book with Clayton, who was four, and we finish the book with teenage girls who have a lot to say about children, place and sustainability. Like Clayton, the girls are growing up in the shadow of a ‘crumbling’ world, with the sense that the world is on the brink of collapse. For Clayton this is manifest in the tension between a world going faster and faster to fling off all the rubbish on Australia and the necessary and inevitable anchors that are holding it in place. For the older children, tension is held in their perception of a world that is only just still functioning and we are not doing enough to forestall its disintegration. Through this apocalyptic storyline they inherit a sense of failed responsibility to future generations of humans and to the animals destined for extinction. These are powerful stories transmitted in language that produce strong emotions. The ways that they negotiate the impact and meaning of these stories is threaded throughout the interview in the play of light and dark, the spoken and the unspoken, and what lies in between.

I worry about things a lot. I find it really awful the way that we’re treating our environment, a lot of people are just so dismissive of the problems that are in the environment. I mean you look around and they’re like ‘Oh we’re fine, look the sky is still blue, the trees are still green, everything’s still functioning’, and they don’t see that it’s only just still functioning, it’s on the brink of, it may not be in our lifetime but it’s all going to come crumbling down. Do you really want to ruin it for other generations?

(Mirabelle, interview)

It’s something that as humans we have the responsibility to be doing more towards preventing climate change from worsening. I feel like we could be doing a lot more than what we are already doing, and it’s worrying that the environment that we know today might not be the same for our future generations, so my grandkids or my great grandkids might not experience the environment in the same ways that I have, there might not be the same animals. And that’s really sad.

(Kelly, interview)