What to Tell Children

Climate change is a terrifying thing. Doom scrolling through pictures of the Pacific Palisades scorched black, Southern Europe’s wildfires or Amazonian deforestation, the youth is particularly affected. This is Marc ter Horst’s target audience with his Against the Flow or Rugzwemmen.

At Festivaletteratura, he meets his young readers in a seminar room of the Polytechnic: sterile, white, with neat rows of desks and an interactive whiteboards that projects images of the local vegetation. It does not possess the formidable allure of Mantua’s many basilicas and palazzos. But it’s perfect for what ter Horst stands for: spreading climate education among the youth. "I'm an educator, not an activist", he makes clear.

The heroine of his book is Nora, a thirteen-year-old affected by the strange mix of terror and fatigue that so many adolescents have regarding the climate crisis. Through education, ter Horst wishes to change this sclerotising disillusion. As the namesake of his book, ter Horst wishes to go "against the flow" of current climate education.

Why did he write this book? "Because I was interested in this matter", he puts it bluntly. And why would a teenager not be? A cross-examination of his research and school curriculums, ter Horst explains, brought the fore the yawning gap between textbooks and current events in the climate crisis.

To remedy that, the Dutch writer does not mince words. "We are in a dire situation and it’s only getting worse", he clearly states. One cannot subtract anything from reality, when talking about climate change. "The stories are realistic, and some are dystopian", he says. Paradoxically, two words that may very soon come to represent the same reality. Our duty towards the young is to educate them, not coddle with mendacious promises of resolution.

This is his motivation. Today’s children will be the adults of tomorrow and must deal with this precarious future. Marc ter Horst understands the weight of this responsibility, and wants to equip children "with the facts".

For ter Horst, we should tell it like it is, even if that "it" is climate breakdown; why bother otherwise?