Too many British children are deprived of nature. If they can’t recognise a swift, will they care if it doesn’t come back?
When the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was published in early August, it confirmed what was already being made increasingly obvious by 2021’s extreme weather events: the burning of fossil fuels is “choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk”.
While the report’s main headlines weren’t news to many – especially climate scientists, who have been sounding the alarm for decades, and the fossil fuel industry, which has spent billions obscuring the truth about climate change – one cohort in the UK was mostly able to continue with their days unaware of its implications: young children.