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Kids take action in Healdsburg

JAY BECKWITH

The isolation required by COVID-19 has been a mixed bag. It has allowed me to come to terms with trends that have emerged over the last few years. Having spent my life as an avid environmentalist and a play systems creator, the trends that concern me are those that consider how the environmental crisis impacts children.

I found the National Intelligence Council's recent release: Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World, particularly interesting. The study examined the impact of COVID-19, such as increasing nationalism, climate change, and rising political tensions. The report provided four possible futures ranging from rosy, if all things go well, to dire. My takeaway is that their worst-case was off by orders of magnitude. Here's why.

  • While they dealt with climate change, they failed to account for microplastic pollution, which is a far worst threat since it is so ubiquitous, deadly, and intractable.
  • No accounting was made of the utter failure of education systems, which has resulted in half of the population unable to form rational conclusions based on facts and free of bias.
  • The report failed to address the systemic inequities that ensure the status quo.

I could go on, but the report's biggest failure was to not address the impact COVID-19 has had on children. We can start by looking at childhood suicide that has increased at an alarming rate. The report failed to consider Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) studies, which show that having three of ten ACEs leads to life-long health complications and early death. COVID-19 adds another ACEs and makes all of the others more likely and severe. This generation will be known as the COVID-Kids, and they will be like none other.

In summary, my conclusion is that we are well and truly screwed, and we don't have sufficient brainpower to prevent the next great mass extinction. The world we bequeath to today's children will be a small fraction of what we have known.

This generation will be known as the COVID-Kids, and they will be like none other.

So, what to do?

For my part, I am taking the 60+ years I have spent learning about early childhood development and creating ways to help children move forward. This is quite simple. We know children need to be more active and outside. When children take positive action to address the problems they see, their mental health is significantly improved. Most importantly, I will advocate for any changes that give kids more control over their lives, including when, where, and how they play.

Four months ago, I came up with the idea of working with my Sunrise Rotary Club to give kids wildflower seeds to plant as a way to protect butterflies and bees. It turns out that it is best to plant these in the winter, so they get watered in, which we will do this December.

In the meantime, a whole community group has sprung up to support pollinators, share information, and host educational zoom sessions. https://www.facebook.com/groups/healdsburgpollinators.

Another offshoot is "Where the Wild Things Are," created by Charity Anderson, the children's librarian at the Healdsburg branch. This is a geocaching event that takes kids on a tour of the local pollinator patches, where they find caches to collect buttons of different insects to put in their tour passports and win prizes.

It is not too early to start planning for planting this December. My personal goal is to mobilize the county Rotary Clubs to get seeds in kids' hands and wildflower patches in as many Sonoma County towns and regional parks as possible. Just imagine what these wildflower patches will look like on Earth Day, 2022. Pollinator Paradise, baby!

This initiative is good for the butterflies and bees, for sure. But most importantly, the campaign helps children have a tangible impact both on the environment and concerns they feel for their future and that of the planet.

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