Children’s book touted at UN conference

A new children’s book about a young Greenlandic boy coming to terms with climate change was promoted this week at a United Nations conference on the issue in Nairobi, Kenya.
The book, Tore and the Town on Thin Ice by Carole Douglis warns about climate catastrophe and urges children to fight climate change.

Douglis was hired by the U.N. Environmental Pro gramme to write the book, which was overseen by the head of its children and youth unit. Stephen Lorin and Noel Broadbent from the Arctic Centre of the Smithsonian Institution were among the contributors.

The book features colourful drawings and has a large text to appeal to young children. It’s part of UNEP’s Tunza Environmental Series for Children.

It tells the story of Tore, who lives in an Arctic village. Tore loses a dog sled race because he crashes through thin ice. After Tore loses the dog sled race, Sedna, the Mother of the Sea, visits him in a dream. Sedna tells him that the thinning ice that caused his loss in the dog sled race was due to manmade global warming.

“I’m the one who created and cares for the sea creatures – whales and walruses, seals and fish,” she says. She then tells him that she will educate him about the reasons the ice is thinning.

The morning after his dream, Tore sets out to learn about the dangers of global warming. A snowy owl tells Tore “the planet’s heating up” and that both the Arctic and Antarctica “are warming almost twice as fast as elsewhere.”

The snowy owl tells Tore that winning dog sledding races “might not be your top worry” in the future because that “lots of things are changing fast.” The bird also says “the great ice cap here in Greenland – mountains of snow and ice up to about four kilometers thick – is thawing.”

Next, a polar bear tells Tore it’s hungry because the ice is too thin to stand on and hunt. The bear says other bears have “starved” because the sea ice went out to sea. The polar bear adds “we may not have much of a future.”

The polar bear concludes by telling Tore that “it looks like many animals and fish and birds will go extinct – die out-during your lifetime, partly because of changes in climate.”

After a whale also talks to Tore about climate change, he finally yells, “Listen, I’ve had all the bad news I can stand. Our world is melting. Polar bears are starving and all sorts of animals won’t survive. I don’t want to hear anymore!”

The whale says, “That’s the spirit! Get good and angry. You’ll need all that energy to make a difference.”

The whale then goes on to describe computer model projections of massive coastal flooding in the future and the potential destruction of human life in coastal areas because of the projected sea level rise.

Tore asks, “Is there anything at all a kid like me can do?”

Sedna tells Tore that the solution to the climate crisis can begin in his village by “setting up solar panels to get electricity from the sun, and modern windmills to capture the energy of the wind.”

The book ends with a section on “what can you do?” The book’s answers include suggestions such as “join or create an environmental club,” “only drive cars if you must,” and “write to your political leaders.”

Critics of the Kyoto agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions meanwhile bashed the book for its stance on reducing global emissions, by blaming the richer, industrialized nations for causing climate change.