As the baby boomers retire their successors Generation X increasingly assume political and managerial power. Yet Gen X seems to be the least PO and GW aware or the most in denial. If they stuff it up for Gen Y, Z et seq then history will judge them harshly. That's if future society is coherent enough to bother with history.

I feel sorry for young children who are going to watch things fall apart as they grow up. That 7 y.o. kid no doubt gets bussed or dropped off to school and his parents imagine he will go right through to university. But it will never happen for many; we may not not be able to bus schoolkids in years to come and there may be little point to university education.

In Australia it beggars belief that vested interests are trying to kill off climate mitigation efforts. Our biggest river is drying while the desert is flooded and firestorms decimate the city fringes. Yet businessjerks don't want the bother of carbon caps or renewable energy targets. Well let's hope these people make it through to old age and get to explain themselves to today's kids.

Nice piece. I advise the young people to keep asking "why." Most adults do a very poor job of substantiating their opinions.

Well, I could see this coming a long time ago so I got a vasectomy back in 95 to make sure I don't need to see any of my children suffer. It's going to be horrible to say the least. Most people don't have any clue about how to produce food or clothing or any of their essential needs. I don't know if humans will go extinct or not but we are sure going to make a huge mess of this planet pretty soon.

Excellent letter to Parker.

My wife and I made the choice to not have kids, and I think if not for that it would be a lot more difficult for us to think clearly about what's coming.

But I'd weigh in for educating them as early as possible, to help prevent unnecessary feelings of loss in the future. For instance, I wish I had not been initially brought up to believe that a friendly God was looking down on me, that the universe was entirely fair, and that I would live forever in fields of cotton candy. When I reconciled the contradictions at age 5 and realized everyone around me was crazy, I suffered a feeling of deep loss for that eternal life and promise of justice and guaranteed eternal happiness, not to mention some alienation to the liars. It was a cruel lie, and it made me feel that the gift of life was relatively diminished and unvaluable. Had I been brought up without the lie, I would have been spared years of dejection. Humans experience perceived loss differently than perceived gain, and compare things in a relative way. It's hard for any real life to live up to a boilerplate fantasy.

And that was over something as dumb as mythology. Keeping the truth of the physical world and complex systems from kids today builds psychological time bombs and prevents them from thinking about ways to survive and be happy in changing times.

My past work is such that I get a constant stream of college grads seeking me out and asking to apprentice for me doing anything I want them to do. Several years ago I tried to bring a few of them up to speed on thermodynamic, geological and evolutionary realities to help them prepare for a changing and relatively resource-constrained future.

I stopped doing it. Although I didn't hit them over the head with it, they were coming to me fresh from college after years of being told they could all be astronauts. Clueing them in that no, you CAN'T all be astronauts not only didn't empower them, but it depressed them. The message society gives to its kids is that the days of miracle and wonder will continue, and that magic doors will open for them. So we prepare them for a specialized life with no real-world skills. And by the time they're out of college it's too late for them to have anything but an abrupt and traumatic change of worldview which usually won't take place.

I'd say that if you're gonna reproduce at all, you should bring your kid up without the lies from the getgo. Have them learn to use tools and read books, and have a self-image that's not 100% dependent on their peer groups. They'll thank you for it, will be happier, and may even survive longer.

OPINIONS

Children can be intellectually exposed to almost anything as long as it is presented in a way that is suitable to their language and comprehension skills and their individual sensitivities and predilections. Nate's letter to Parker is a good example. (And brought a tear to my eyes)

With shrinkage will come devolution of specialization and therefore reduced need of specialized education - smaller and less specialised universities - broader but shallower curricula.

What should we be telling our children about resource depletion, overpopulation, limits to growth, and our energy future? At what age do we start having these conversations?

Why not tell them everything, packaged according to their individual development of language and comprehension. An age criteria cannot be fixed because every individual develops at a different rate, and would possibly develop more evenly if not forced into a system that demands a specific degree of development for a specific age group.

Is this example just like everything else, that we have to wait for a crisis before changing our current path?

It's sorta mechanics, inertia, momentum, F-m*a, I=m*v stuff. We are intrinsically incapable of applying the brakes in due time, hence the number of road accidents; hence the current "all wheels locked, smoking rubber, not effective braking situation".

Do we need to dramatically change how we view education?

YES. Stop teaching survive within the system skills and start teaching survive within Life & Eternity.

( Root out dead religions and teach Applied Metaphysics would be one important area EDIT: See Greenish's "God as a Lie" comment above )

/OPINIONS

There will be a need for highly trained engineers and scientists in our future, unless you wish to invoke a rapid collapse back to much simpler times and way fewer people. A lot of infrastructure will remain and will have to serviced, at a minimum. It cannot be done by aging boomers, at least not for many more decades. There's a fair chance that nuclear power will make a comeback and even proceed forward. Any society maintaining or perhaps expanding nuclear technology better had taught and trained their children well. So, while advanced degrees in marketing or business administration or banking, tourism industry might become passe, those in the hard sciences, in agriculture and animal husbandry and in the basics of other disciplines like English had better be supported with whatever our society can muster.

Great post Nate.

We too could see this coming. I am a 35 year-old Australian, married, Generation X Medical Professional male and my wife & I have been changing our way of living for some time already.

Excellent advice Nate, This young man is fortunate to have you as a friend.

Joseph Campbell has some interesting advice to the young ones. It is captured in this quote.

"A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation. "As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think."

Children are the best people to talk to about Peak Oil. At schoolgoing age, grasping that the amount of oil is finite is not hard. Try talking to an economist about that for comparison! Borrowing words from the gameshow, "Are you smarter than a seven year old", try talking to ordinary people about Peak Oil. The best and most receptive response you will get is the throwing of hands in the air, saying "doom is coming".

Which is why, as an educator, I have stopped trying to talk to adults and focus on the children.

Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a speech in 1957 talking about the fact that oil production, and in fact all fossil fuel production, is expected to peak and decline, starting in in the early 21st century (coal more toward the middle of the century). In that speech, he talks about our responsibility to our descendants.

I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women. This means that we must not delay building more schools, colleges, and playgrounds. It means that we must reconcile ourselves to continuing higher taxes to build up and maintain at decent salaries a greatly enlarged corps of much better trained teachers, even at the cost of denying ourselves such momentary pleasures as buying a bigger new car, or a TV set, or household gadget. We should find - I believe - that these small self-denials would be far more than offset by the benefits they would buy for tomorrow's America. We might even - if we wanted - give a break to these youngsters by cutting fuel and metal consumption a little here and there so as to provide a safer margin for the necessary adjustments which eventually must be made in a world without fossil fuels.

I have often thought that if his advice had been heeded, children would have learned about the expected peak and decline in school, at an early age. That way, work could have been started early on regarding how to deal with the expected problem.

We now need children's books that talk about peak oil, and some thoughts about the world ahead, so that parents who choose to teach their children about the problem have appropriate teaching materials.

This is another great campfire topic.

This is a very touchy issue. What you say - and how you raise children:

...Their parents both see and understand the clouds forming on the horizon, yet have chosen to let their kids live normal lives (normal being typical American children in 2009,...

What if the parents disagree about what to tell the children? And disagree on how to raise them in this culture?

Is "let them live 'normal' lives" the same as "raising" children?

A very good letter, Nate.

The only things I might have added are: 1) Doubt everything, question everything, me included.* 2) In the end, there are two fundamental resources: dirt and brains.

It's a very real problem. My kids are in their 30s, and already know a lot of the story. But my grandchildren are in their 1s and 2s, and it won't be my job to tell them. What was best about your letter was that it told a lot of the truth without being depressing as hell. But the truth is, it's going to take a mindset that is completely different from what prevails now. It's going to be very difficult even for those that get the benefit of something like your letter.

* This was in effect what Marx told one of his daughters.

I think you can be pretty upfront with kids about stuff like this. Make it sound like an adventure.

I think kids are drawn to stories of overcoming adversity, and will be attracted to the idea that they will have challenges to face and they can be heroes getting themselves and their friends through them.

Two of my favorite books when I was a kid were "Escape from Warsaw" and "The Long Winter". Both are about kids coping with hardship and being brave. The idea of having to do without comforts and needing to learn how to survive is not that scary to kids, IMO (look at all of the "stranded on an island" stories).

I think kids also understand environmental issues pretty instinctively, and so it might actually be easier to convince them of the finiteness of things. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make gardening and especially animal husbandry fun for them (although explaining the animal/meat connection could be difficult).

I tell my kids (told them, as they are now adults in their 20's) that now is a very exciting time to be alive. Mankind is facing his destiny and each of us will show what we are made of.

Kids need to see the excitement of their parents - excitement with life and learning and the ability of their parents to meet any situation that arises. Anxiety seems to be a part of us. We have to learn to deal with it.

I used to start vacation trips by telling the kids I hoped something unexpected would happen so we would have a real adventure. We never made motel reservations or knew in the morning where we would be that night. It never presented a problem, in fact we looked for novelty and set up tents in the dark or in the rain or raided canned food for dinner. Life is an adventure until time's up. Engage!

Recommendations from a TOD'er who actually IS a parent right now:

1. Camping is fun.
2. Read all the Little House series/ Laura Ingall Wilder books
3. Music lessons on a real, not virtual, instrument
4. Raising a small livestock pet is fun and can become a small business.
5. American Girl doll books [and movie] circa 1934 [KIT series]
6. Knitting an ipod holder/purse/hat is fun and can become a small business.
7. Walking to school with friends is fun.
8. Growing and preparing potato/tomato/pumpkin etc from seed is fun and can become a small business.
9. Purchasing 5 fashion items or books at the kids consignment shop is cheaper and more rewarding than purchasing just one at a mall store.
10. Smoking stinks and alcohol is a drug; but Dancing and Singing feel great and don't cost anything.
11. Manners matter. And do not speak to strangers. [not a contradiction]
12. Silver coin collecting is fun.

I also told my kid someday things will be different. Habits will have to change because there will be less energy to waste. So let's learn not to waste it now so it won't seem as hard to do later.

In my case it doesn't matter one whit what I tell my children. They don't believe a damn thing I tell them about the coming energy and environmental crisis.

Ron

Great post Nate,
I have two kids, a seven yo boy and an almost two yo girl. We have bought a 2 acre block and have chooks, a couple of sheep, some fruit trees and a vegie patch. The kids love the animals and bit by bit, hopefully I am educating my seven year old where our food comes from and how we can grow our own. I live in a reasonably hilly area, but still ride with my son and my daughter in the baby seat most days. It is strange the looks people give you and the excuses that they give as to why they can't ride a bike. Not many people at all ride around my area (yet?).

Last year I gave a presentation to my sons class on oil. I found it funny that his class seemed to get the concept that you can only get so much oil out of the earth (squeezing an orange provides a useful demonstration)whereas a lot of adults can't. I guess they have not been indoctrinated with the 'dominant narrative' that growth is good yet. For this reason, the more kids know, and the earlier they know it the better with regards to PO, CC and limits to growth etc.

My son has a tendency to whine when he doesn't get his way, so he is doing a bit of a project at home to compare his life to other countries around the world. I helped him creat a chart to compare how much oil we Aussies use compared to some other nations (results below) and it was a real eye opener for him, that our way of life is so different to many others, yet we take it for granted (or most of us do).

Country Oil Use per person (bbl/day)
Afghanistan 0.0002
Australia 0.0475
Bosnia 0.0067
Cambodia 0.0003
Colombia 0.0055
Ethiopia 0.0005
Mexico 0.0208
Papua New Guinea 0.0051
Sierra Leone 0.0014
Sri Lanka 0.0042
AVERAGE 0.0113

I think the downfall of education in any context is overblown. Kunstler also talked about educational demise in his The Long Emergency book. But as Cuba has demonstrated, they had to increase the number of universities to deal with their challenge in the 90s. They needed more experts in soil and agriculture, as we do surely now. I think therefore it'll be somewhere in between. As people have more important things to do rather than play a Wii or golf and want to eat and have heating or air conditioning, they will want to learn. By doing they help.

As such the concept of high tuition may be supplanted at first with neighbours helping neighbours then starting teaching to wider audiences. Eventually schools will be more numberous not less, such that the need to know will be more, not less. I don't know what will happen to tuition or what that will mean later.

So learn how to learn. I decided to act last fall. As an adult student in pre-university courses trying to make an entry, if I can get a couple of years of engineering under my belt, why wouldn't I feel I can help? Hopefully I'll be done before of any drastic challenges. The imperitive of knowing will be the glue that binds a society.

If your job, life, and situation are all going to change anyway, don't wait.

As for kids, they love dirt and gardens, so I can't see it as much of a burden since they haven't lost anything.

Cheers

Very well done. After I had 2 boys, I got snipped, back in the 80's we talked replacement. Limits to growth etc. The boys grew up heating with wood, pigs and chickens, large gardens. For quite a few years an outhouse. They grew up with chores. Those chores were not meaningless they directly contributed to how we lived. They knew that. Very good times, many killer memories. Both are off living in cities, doing their thing. Both have checked, somewhat on the sly, that if it gets bad can they hightail it here . They have found people who love them, probably the greatest gift a father can see.

And, of course they are all welcome here and actually prepped for somewhat. Both couples have a keen eye, different but keen and I don't see either of them reproducing. That may change if it does hit and we are all here.

Now I ended up divorced, kind of a surprise, so I ended up a single parent with 2 boys. That was when we really learned to work as a team. Oldest son became a remarkable cook, younger son became mr fixit if I wasn't around.

Then all heck broke loose, I met another single parent, she had 2 girls. Long story short, I ended up with what older son affectionately calls NYSW, a new young sexy wife, and 2 step daughters. Boy I did not realize how easy it was to raise boys, until I had girls to. Think Brady Bunch. Older stepdaughter is a doll shortly after we all got together they had a shadow your father day at school, and then they had to write as essay. Well I took her to a mountain top to work on some broadcast equipment. Bread and cheese lunch looking way down on the ocean. She talks about it to this day. She got an A. Older son and she are the very best of friends.

Now here's a debate for you and I do not mean to sound unkind. Younger step-daughter could never get over leaving her father, even though he was the one that left, it was constant blame and anger. I could never even come close to being a replacement. In fact I had no authority over her at all. My role was to pay the bills she ran up. Not a one of us could control her. When she was alone at the house she went through every ones things, stole money etc. It was just horrible for everyone. And yes my new wife and I fought about her. She lost her license to drive and we all hated having her home, she drove the electric bill to heights I had never seen as well as the telephone bill.
She turned 18 and left, moved close to her father, and got pregnant 3 months later.

She's on the dole, we can't support what she does, she's considered an adult. She has gotten pregnant twice since then, I think she just wants to increase the check she gets. No fathers show up at all. Thankfully someone at state level helped and she has only one child, my grankid. She is seriously obese, 300 if not 350, when she sleeps here it's like having a beached whale on the futon.

Thankfully I don't see any drugs etc in it. I'm not blowing my own horn but this was a real supportive family, even when we came together, my sons dealing with my new wife were just great. It just seemed like she was just out of our control, or any ones.

So yah, those that are least fit to reproduce do, because they get a check. and I'm living this. The smart ones, are not. It tugs at my heart.

Peace

Don in Maine

Thanks for sharing your thoughtful letter. One of the best parts was this:

We used just the sun for thousands of generations before. And you know what? For someone young like yourself, running out of cheap oil might actually be pretty cool. You have an amazing opportunity to be involved in the first ‘sustainability revolution’ on our planet.

As I see it there are two ways to go down the far side of the peak(s), kicking and screaming or looking for the opportunities. I see no value in kicking and screaming except bloody fingernails and a sore throat.

There are always opportunities on the frontier.

Also, I have tried to tell my kids the best truth for their age and comprehension. That is always a challenge and as a parent I'd say you scored pretty well in your letter.

"I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride..." -The Grateful Dead

The answer for my own little nephew is:

"There's between 100 and 150 years of oil left and then it'll be too expensive to get it out of the ground. There won't be enough left for everybody anyway.

That's why we are looking for alternative sources of energy. So you will always be able to turn on a light switch and get light."

(He doesn't need to know that we're here in the 'States outnumbered 17 to 1 for that oil and that people outside our borders already used to paying a lot more for oil.)

I say use the media!

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/are_violent_video_games?utm_source...
Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

What a response from Parker:

I know that the oil is getting expensive so I am trying to find a new way to make oil and plastic

I'd be interested to know what, exactly, a seven year old is trying, in order to make cheap oil and plastic. But, more worryingly (though he is only seven, so maybe his attitude will change) is that he appears to be prepared to try anything to keep the status quo going. My word, but he has grown up fast and is acting just like the adults already!

I expect that civilization will experience a gradual energy decline, followed by a period lasting on the order of centuries that resembles the "dark ages", and perhaps eventually a new Enlightenment.

My wife and I have one child, a 4-year old. He belongs only to himself and the future. What that means is that he doesn't belong to us. Our job is to serve him and those who come after him. The best thing we can send into the future with him is the knowledge humans have acquired. I hope that there will be some that keep this knowledge alive until people are ready for it again, much like monks kept the classics alive during the "dark ages". Of course, if our son would rather be a musician or an athlete, that is his to decide as well.

In the present, we do what we can to be prepared where we are at, and I hope that he will learn practical skills from us as we learn them ourselves. I am trained as a scientist, and I also have ability to do most aspects of home improvement, including solar installation. My wife is a good gardener, and we are developing Permaculture-ish landscape fed with greywater, rain catchments, and (sadly) some fossil water.

We often tell our son that "we live in the desert, so we don't waste water". Some day, rules like this will probably become an explicit part of our moral code. Too bad they are not universally held now.

Nate,

I'm answering without reading any of the comments, so if I am repetitive, I apologize.

Kids are little lie detectors. When we lie to them, they know it. When we cover the lie with more lies and false sincerity to convince the child there is nothing to worry about, all we have done is diminish the child's self-trust. They knew you were lying, but you convinced them otherwise. They will trust their intuition less in the future.

As a father, former child and educator I say tell the truth. The whole truth is not always necessary (the role of the Fed, BuCheney intentionally preventing action on climate and conservation, etc., e.g.) nor useful, and "lies" intended to create wonder, creativity and awe (the man in the moon, Santa Claus) have their place. But when it comes to the real world and real events in a child's life, withholding info too often leads to confusion, doubt, lack of trust and self-blame for the child. Of course, age is important and the style and extent of the message should be tailored, but not watered down or misrepresented.

What is required in an environment of truth is support. This means emotional support, of course, but also a continued openness from the parent to continue to answer questions that come up. This also means not leaving it up to the child to come to you. Even young children have already learned to keep some things to themselves, whether for privacy, embarrassment, or other reason. We need to try to pay attention and approach them if we sense they might have things weighing on their mind.

Equally important is encouraging them to take control of their circumstance. That is, empower them. Just making them aware is really not enough to make them feel they can do something to protect them and theirs. This is the shortcoming I see in your note. You did this, but vaguely, and in a very future-oriented way. Kids under about 12 are still very much concrete, cause and effect thinkers. You might have made suggestions for action, such as conservation activities, a worm farm, forming groups with other kids, whatever. You, of course, know more of the child's life than I do.

As regards education, it is well-known that most people learn best by doing. Education needs to get out of the schools and into the real world. Apprenticeships, skill-based education, applying learning in the real world. Nothing wrong with book learning, but perhaps - this is off the top of my head - something like 3 hours of classroom and 3 hours of practicum per day might be a way to go. Or, home/community schooling, perhaps via the internet. This takes much less time - around half - than going to school. Less than half when you eliminate travel.

And why shouldn't the major issues of the day be part of education?

My 2c.

Cheers

Make it your mission to not allow the politicians to increase population in your community, your city, your state, your country, or your world. Make that the number one item on the todo list. If that problem can't be fixed, everything else is futile.

On someone's recommendation here, I started watching Colonial House. Fascinating. Might be a good way to introduce kids to how life might look in the future.

(Great letter, btw, Nate.)

Maharishi was a Vedic scholar. He was apolitical. When I paraphrase him it is understood that his reference point was always the Veda. He said everything we can imagine is possible and everything we cannot imagine is also possible. He said we are obliged to invent FAR BETTER TECHNLOLOGY, so in that vein I urge the following: A brand new science for batteries. Oil is the fuel for really crappy machines from an engineer's point of view. Electric muscle machines; cars, trucks, airplanes, heavy equipment, etc, given an adequate battery, will effortlessly kill fuel burning machines in the marketplace. This is a certainty and therefore the battery needs to be pursued but not merely an improved one but one which is 20X better while costing half of the best available now. The mere appearance of that battery will immediately inspire another even more fundamentally important technology in the form of a new material. The massive new market for powerful electric motors for muscle machines creates the glaring need for inexpensive high performance electric motors. The superconducting material which WILL be found holds a frightening potential for change borne of machine evolution. I believe the sheer wall of inertia represented by the fuel burning machines is what protects the United States' status quo militarily. Just as it is prohibitively expensive to engage in manufacturing cars as we know them, specifically due to their crappiness, which is itself borne of their absurd complexity and problematic character, it is similarly extraordinarlily difficult and expensive to engineer and build the most advance military hardware on earth. We of course own that hardware and it will be leapfrogged quickly and easily by nations with less money and lesser scientific and engineering experience than us. This is my backwards way of explaining why we, the US, has not done the science and technology which would be good enought to make a full size American car travel 500 or a 1000 miles on a single charge in an inexpensive battery. The expense and extreme difficulty of engineering high tech muscle machinery is our security moat. Introduce the battery and superconductors and innovation will cascade like never before in human history and nobody can predict who will have the upper hand from one year to the next and then from one month to the next. No nationaly security for years until some group or other gains the upper hand somehow. Nevertheless we must do this. The Asians will certainly do it in any case. We may as well be on record as the ones who did. I think the dangers are outweighed by the advantages and it's moot anyway because we will not be allowed to bore the universe much longer. We are not in charge and nature is clearly pressing for more fun and adventure.

Our daughters currently are 17 and 14. From early on we embraced learning and creativity as key, explicit values. To that end we have tried to catalyze, nourish, and model learning, significantly following and encouraging their interests. We've had no taboo topics, and we've refrained from forcing topics on them, too.

With learning and creativity values as polestars that they internalized early, public schooling for them (and us) has been a breeze. Our older daughter recently was accepted, early admission to a fancy US university of her choice. Her sister lives the same values with equal academic and social success so far.

The grrls have grown up as listeners and active participants in myriad conversations with friends and among ourselves about a wide range of bottleneck-future issues: exponential growth, global peak oil production, North American peak natural gas production, global warming, agriculture, pollution, environmental issues, etc. Energy issues actually became a frequent topic (a kind of obsessive interest for me) in the late nineties. The grrls have grown up with their own seasonal gardens, livestock, and commercial fishing. So their home learning has been pretty organic, literally and figuratively. They follow current events, and during the Obama election they became politically active.

Their mom and I wrestle with trade-offs associated with consumption-implicated life choices on the spectrum from ascetic to simple to taking advantage of higher-throughput opportunities, and as the grrls have grown, they have joined the conversations. We skip considerable consumption excess by US standards -- but we still make choices like flying to Spain (where, at the grrls' instigation, we are now) to live for the school year and learn Spanish. As parents, our frugal life-style has favored autonomy over security, and striven for self-reliance at the level of daily maintenance. As the grrls have grown, we've wrestled with major trade-offs together as a family.

I share this above as theory-in-use. If a more dismal scenario unfolds and the choices are "move, adapt, or die," the first two of these options for them should be more realistic, I hope. If a rosy scenario unfolds, they'll be well-situated to enjoy it, I hope. Regardless, I also hope they continue to grow in their ability to enjoy their part in the unfolding.

My policy-related recommendation? More emphasis on "learning" and "shared learning," and less emphasis on "education." Education is not necessarily antithetical to learning, but it too often kills learning (check drop-out rates) and blinds us to reality. I think this partly is a matter of cultural emphasis. I'm also not too keen on religious "faith," which seems to me profoundly anti-learning in important respects. Let me see more science.

Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?

A Blatant bit of self promotion, but I think that "ScienceWiz Energy" is a great introduction to the concept of the future of energy for elementary age children.

Very interesting and challenging topic, and you crafted your letter to Parker beautifully. Thank you for bringing this topic up. I am a pediatrician and am writing an article on children and the environment in the next century, so this discussion is timely, and the comments here are good food for thought as to what I should say and write in the "what is to be done" part of my manuscript. Many of the comments so far have been very insightful, and moving also.

Here are a few of my own thoughts:

Have kids: They will add more purpose to your life. How many is up to you because there are many complex factors that determine the answer, but be rational and base your decision on reality, not on theology. Having 'proxy' kids, like nephews and nieces, or god-children, may be one way of fulfilling your life without adding overall to the population.

Listen to their questions and answers. Perhaps more than whatever the question or answer is, is that you really attend to what the child is saying. Kids grasp more than you think. Give them the respect due to them as a fellow citizen, as well as your child.

Their questions will dictate what they want to know. When you answer, tell them the truth as you know it, always. Life will be very difficult at times and children need to know that, from at least one source, what is told to them is the truth, is something they have a reasonable expectation that they can hang their hat on. Sometimes you don't know the truth, or the question is one that cannot be answered in that manner. Be honest about this to your child. While there may well be black clouds on the horizon, there is also likely to be some blue sky. Emphasize the sunny side, but don't deny trouble. Also, if you don't know the answer, take this as an opportunity to work with your child to find the answer. Both of you will learn in knowledge, and also in information-acquiring skills that, at least for your kid, will be novel and useful to have.

Above all, don't deny our predicament. Accept it yourself. If you deny, what you tell your kid isn't going to be worth much. For TOD readers this is probably a no-brainer, but it is likely one of the key problems we face: denial. I know we have a lot on our plate at present, but peak oil, climate change, resource depletion, biocapacity deficits, are all real and pressing problems. Putting our head in the sand does nothing.

Respect your child. He/she is likely able to comprehend more than you think, especially if you provide your argument, (information, teaching) in a way that is clear and simple. 'Because' is a cop out. Sometimes you need to use it, but do so sparingly.

Push them. Challenge them. Give them responsibility. Give them confidence in themselves. Support them morally, psychologically, emotionally, financially (if you can and don't be ridiculous about it); be there--across the table or at the end of a phone, or wherever, but be there, they really need you.

Get them into group activities: sports, arts, whatever. This breeds friendship and they also learn that cooperation with others usually works out better than doing it all by themselves.

Teach them about nature, about ecosystems, about ecosystem services, about gardening, about limits and about conservation. We have been grossly negligent in our education system with respect to almost any aspect of nature, apart from how man can use it to his advantage. WE need to teach kids about nature (in its broadest sense), for the benefit of nature, not man.

One can go on forever. If only we could.

Don

There was an excellent Disney cartoon featuring Goofy that was posted on TOD some time ago. Unfortunately the link has been removed from youtube because of copyright violations. It was a vintage cartoon, round late 40's early '50s. It described a story of a town expanding and how goods were moved around and one day the well runs dry. Goofy then begins inventing all kinds of whacko contraptions to get around and each one having a little foible about it that ends in some injury to Goofy. It was really excellent and to the point of resource depletion and how difficult it is to replace our existing infrastructures.

Anyway, childrens books, cartoons, the same mediums we use today to communicate to kids...would work really well. Peal oil, resource depletion and the like needs to be worked into our culture. Taught in our elementary schools. Required curriculum for our high schoolers.

I get the feeling from being around kids that peak oil might be a thing to be embraced. What child likes the idea of a cubicle job waiting for him/her? What child wouldn't like to drink out of a stream? What child likes cars (except for toy ones of course)? Children would rather run over and play with neighbor's kids, coming and going and exploring at will on foot than being driven by their parents. Children want to ride horses. Children love to do things by hand (those popsicle-stick knitting projects, do-it-yourself stick fishing poles, etc.) Sitting still for 6 hours a day in school might not be possible anymore as school funding gets cut....what child wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of more time for running around outside? Parents will be home anyway, no job and no money, the kids will be the beneficiaries as they get a chance to learn practical skills and the parents get a chance to teach instead of fretting about test scores.

Grown-ups will also probably embrace the new way life slows down and leaves room for chatting. No car? Oh well, no one else has one anyway so nevermind....No food except a few sweet potatoes? Well, tomorrow is another day so let's share. No new clothes? Well, the ones you are wearing will do for now at least.

Life has been one long cometition for me (I'm 43 and grewup in the NY suburbs, went to "good" college after MUCHO pressure applied for whole childhood, then on to teaching job but I've kind of (haha) "droppped out" by doing everything on a part-time basis now so I have more time). I really sort of envy kids who will come after, who despite hardships will find life as people who are much much older than me have described it....

I think we humans never really adapted well to the FF lifestyle: we found obesity, debt, pollution, terrible anxiety about competing, bad food filled with additives and plastic chemicsal residues, climate change, Prozac, ritalin, incinerators, etc. on this side of our FF fence. Is anyone happy with the outcome? So going back will probably be more "natural" for us. It will suit us well and it will particularly suit kids, who will sing and play outside freely again (this is what they really love most), while in the background Mother Nature makes a comeback (already construction way down, cars driving way down, things being manufactured and sold way down).

I think someday people will just feel sorry for the generations including mine that suffered as they mindlessly consumed the world..........although it could be argued that we used the FF up so quickly subconsciously as a kind of noble sacrifice so that humans could get back to enjoying their green-blue planet nice and slow again.....

In many ways (certainly not in every way) I think that our current circumstances are a gift to my children. They've come right now into a world where they matter very much - and their participation in our family work matters, not in abstract "get straight As and a good college education" sense, but in ways that help provide warmth and food and security to us. They get a good dose of responsiblity very early on - and the chance to make meaning in their lives.

My sense (and my memory of my childhood - I'm 36, firmly Gen X) is that one of the things that cheap energy has done is deprive children (and adults) of the power to feel that their work and their actions matter, except in negative or perhaps subcultural ways. That is, most of the work we do, most of our life's actions simply don't do anything very valuable. This, I think, leads us to a rush of meaning making - in adolescence, often adherence to subcultures, in adulthood obsession with popular culture, because it is here we are told to find our identity.

I don't claim that my parenting will be perfect - in 15 years, I may well be here with the older parents acknowledging the limitation of my parenting model. But as a parent, what I give my kids is the gift of knowing that their contributions are essential - that the wood they haul keeps us warm, that the food they grow and pick feed us, that the relations they help build in our community help sustain us. That the things they fix and protect and do without preserve us. They live a life that is filled with meaning. I don't know that I can do much more than that for them, besides showing them the ropes of making one's way with very little.

As such, we talk about peak oil (and climate change, and population, and the economy), but not nearly as much as we talk about our shared goals and about how we will manage changes. We talk a lot about our ecology - both locally and on the world scale. We talk a lot about the value of learning at every level - mostly because what you have in your head is the one thing no one can take from you. But while we answer questions as they come, we don't spend a lot of time educating our kids on the details of peak oil - they'll learn these things as we go, we answer questions as honestly as we can, but our goal is a life that is restorative, joyous, secure, hopeful - no matter what happens. Even if some miracle technology were to suddenly appear, say, from aliens above, it wouldn't matter - we live as we do because it is the right life. And thus, peak oil gets what I think is the appropriate weight for this point in their lives (my boys are 9, 7, 5 and 3, although my 9 year old has some developmental delays, and so 7 is probably developmentally my oldest) - it is one of the many reasons we do what we do, one of the many thing we face in the future, one of the many things Mom writes and speaks about, and that
Dad teaches about. They understand the concept by the time they are 5, but we spend our time on the whole ecological and life aspect of this, and less on single causes.

Sharon

I am pushing a book about the Great Depression, "We had everything but money." I would highly recommend it for older children thinking about post-high school options as a "What If" guide to the future. What if our future is very much like what is described in the first person accounts in this book? What if we never get back to the economy that we used to have? What choices would you want to make regarding education, careers, etc.?

How about saying,
"I'm sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

At the time coal seemed like a better idea than wood.
At the time oil seemed like a better idea than coal.
At the time steam engines seemed like a better idea than horses and sails.
At the time internal combustion seemed like a better idea than steam.
At the time railroads seemed like a better idea than dirt trails and canals.
At the time automobiles seemed like a better idea than railroads.
At the time fast jets seemed like a better idea than long slow train rides.
At the time refrigeration seemed like a better idea than saving last winter's ice.
At the time doing what cost less seemed like a good idea.
At the time having the most toys seemed like a good idea.
At the time nuclear power didn't seem like a good idea.
At the time solar energy didn't seem like a good idea.
At the time wind power didn't seem like a good idea.
I'm sorry. Leaving something for the future didn't seem like a good idea.

We should remember that as long as we are still at the stage of questioning how to educate our children then we haven't yet been confronted with reality consequences that in the end are the onky real "teachers" of overshoot and will be the real catalysts to transform our culture. To the 7 year old I would tell the truth but also remind him to be watchful for reality events that either confirm or discount the story......for in the end we are still only in the story stage, still being driven by our ideology of wanting to save our species and our planet. As noble as this is it will do little to transform and educate the majority of our fellow humans. Realtime consequences are what will tranform us, education is of limited use until real time consequences bring the truth of overshoot into sharp focus. Until then we carry on....

Wonderful article, and excellent response to the question, Nate. Thank you.

Just two comments -

"Children are our most valuable natural resource. -Herbert Hoover"
Sorry Herbert, but my children are NOT anyone's "resources".

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it. -Harry S Truman"
Good advice on the surface, but tell that to the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you murderous son of a bitch.

Unfortunately, Presidents have tended not to be the deepest wells of wisdom.

No kids, so this isn't a direct challenge of mine. Of course, we're all in this together, so it is still my problem in a more indirect sense.

I would be feeling guilty when looking at people younger than I, except:

For the the fact that while I walk to and from work every day, I see all of these teenagers zooming by in their cars.

For the fact that I see all of these elementary school kids riding a bus for a shorter distance than I walked to school.

For the fact that I saw younger people driving big, fast, expensive cars to big, expensive, suburban homes all those years I took the bus home from work to my modest in-city home.

For the fact that in all the years that my wife taught piano at home, we would try to insulate and weatherize and bundle up and turn down the thermostat in the winter, then kids would come to lessons in the middle of winter wearing T-shirts, and demand that the thermostat be turned up to 74.

For the fact that for years we have tried to grow as much of our own produce as we could, and cooked our own meals at home, while observing brats by the hundreds whining and throwing tantrums if they didn't get their daily fix at the golden arches.

If we are going to start handing out guilt awards, I am not at all convinced that all of them should go to me and my generation and none to the younger generation. There is actually plenty of guilt for everyone, including me, in spite of the above.

A final thought: IMHO, the issue is less "what you tell them", and more "what you do". We should all know by now that "do as I say, not as I do" just doesn't cut it. The way you live your life is the strongest and most powerful teaching tool there is. If you want to make a positive difference for the next generation - whether it is your own children or those in your community - then be a model. Whether or not they choose to pay any attention and learn from that model is up to them.

All these comments and not a single mention of die-off. People, if all you have to tell kids is we're going to have to live like Amish again, that's easy. Telling them they have a 5/6th of a chance of perishing in the great die-off is not going to go over well, at least if it's not tempered by some kind of divine salvation tacked on.

What Do We Tell Our Children?

Tell them that there's work to be done and that they'd better get busy if they don't want their dad's boot up their ass.

As a parent of a soon-to-be ten year old boy, I am teaching him what I can.

When he is annoyed with helping me pot up plants in the greenhouse, I grab his attention by asking him this: If this one plant was all there was to eat, what would you do? And when he scoffs at that, I remind him that in many places in the world, boys his age don't even have plants to eat. So in the quiet time that follows as he thinks that through, I ready myself for the inevitable: Well, then, what do they eat? He asked. And I told him the bald truth-nothing. They starve and die. I remind him that some day there may not be grocery stores with lots of food, and that's why his Mom is working at gardening, and that is why I am trying to teach him this. Because one day "Knowing how to grow food and save it, may save your life"

Yes it was an interesting afternoon in a hot greenhouse, potting up tomatoes....but I do make a point to bring up things as the opportunity presents itself from time to time. I have repeatedly offered to teach my sister, and my nieces, how to properly and safely can, dehydrate, pickle, etc, and they are all "too busy" to make time in the season. I have only been into gardening and canning just over a decade, and have a very long ways to go, figuring out gardening up here in Alaska. It's going to be a very rough ride ahead up here, and I am genuinely uneasy about the future.

All I can do is attempt to pass along what I can, teach as I am able those who want to learn, and hope for the best.

Irony of ironies-my spouse is employed in the oil patch up north ;)

A friend of mine has been pressing me to buy these set of books for my family. Not sure if anyone here has hear of Uncle Eric. The titles to the curriculum is intriguing:

http://www.bluestockingpress.com/uncle-eric-books.htm

Uncle Eric Talks About Personal, Career and Financial Security
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy
Whatever happened to Justice
Are You Liberal? Conservative? or Confused?
Ancient Rome: How It Affects You Today
Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think About This
The Money Mystery: The Hidden Force Affecting Your Career, Business and Investments
The Clipper Ship Strategy: For Success in Your Career, Business and Investments
The Thousand Year War in the Mideast: How It Affects You Today
World War I: The Rest of the Story and How It Affects You Today
World War II: The Rest of the Story & How It Affects You Today

This piece of beautiful writing has been copied from here... hope I am not infringing in any way...

Blog : Restoring Mayberry
Author : BRIAN KALLER, COUNTY KILDARE, IRELAND
Link : http://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2008/12/moment-of-darkness.html

Almost vibrating with excitement, my four-year-old carefully carried ornaments to the pine sapling in our living room last night, cradling each one like they were diamonds. We have decked our halls with literal holly from our land, bought a Christmas goose, and are planning a quiet and intimate family Christmas here in rural Ireland.

Holiday cheer, though, struggles against the long winter darkness in this place – we are less than a thousand miles from the Arctic Circle, and today there will be seven hours of dull daylight -- and this year, more than most, it also struggles against the world news.

“Papa, Father Christmas lives at the North Pole!” my daughter announced with the confidence of a four-year-old.

Yes he does, I said, wanting her to experience this magic while she can. What is the North Pole like?

“Well, it is covered with ice and ... snow ... all white and cold ...and …”

But by the time she stops believing in a few years, I think to myself, it might not be. The 2007 ice shocked everyone, shrinking so much that the sea drew near the Pole. That year the IPCC had predicted a new ocean there by 2070. Two months later a new projection said 2030. Two months later they said five years. I'm already talking about Santa Claus; what else should I pretend?

What animals would Santa see at the North Pole? I ask.

“Well,” she begins, “there are polar bears, and seals, and ...”

Perhaps not for long. The polar bears eat the seals that eat the fish that eat the plankton, and the plankton are dying – 73 percent down since 1960. Half the plankton – almost half the animal mass of the Arctic – have disappeared since the Simpsons’ first episode. Maybe it’s because the oceans are growing warmer, maybe because they are getting more acid, maybe it's the plastic and chemicals we've poured into the oceans in my short lifetime. We just don't know.

Reality intrudes into other arenas of childhood. I consider showing her Bugs Bunny cartoons with the Tasmanian Devil, and think: the real one is almost extinct. I introduced her to clips of Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, and she asked, “What is a firefly?”

Fireflies, I explained, are little bugs back where Papa grew up in America, and they light up the night ...

Except not any more. They flickered yellow-green across the grass in my Missouri hometown – you could find your way in the dark by their light. I went back there last year and the nights were black – only a few flickers, and then deep in the Ozark woods.

We put together her jigsaw puzzles of the continents, and I am surprised to see Asia depicted, accurately, without Lake Aral. My childhood maps of Asia are now wrong – that massive lake, the fourth-largest in the world, disappeared in a few decades. Her map of Africa does not show Lake Chad, either – maybe the toymakers are thinking ahead.

We live a strange life, those of us who follow closely the breaking of the world. We look at our kitchens and offices and bus stops and see products of petroleum-powered machines on the other side of the world, transported here in petroleum engines. We flick past the mainstream media every morning and go straight to BBC Science, the Oil Drum and Energy Bulletin, scroll through the allied blogs and listen to podcasts on the bus – all while working regular jobs, paying mortgages and caring for children and elderly, each week filled with the burning usual.

In my case, I am also a father, and I want my daughter to have a decent life in a strange time. I am in my 30s now, but I knew five of my great-grandparents, all born in the 19th century, and my daughter, if she is lucky, may live to see the 22nd. Her life might span humanity's most important decades, and before she is even an adult, the world could grow much more difficult – energy shortages, food shortages, economic collapses and a Malthusian crush. I want her to be able to realize what is happening, and not to be bewildered by a domino line of solitary unthinkables –you can't drink the water here, the power went out, it's not safe there anymore.

As a journalist, I know this is how the mainstream media usually show the world. Civil unrest broke out. Congressional leaders said. Troops encountered heavy fire. Our history books show us where we came from in the same tedious way – Black Tuesday followed by the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff followed by the CCC followed by Lend-Lease. In both cases, the story told is the story of federal policies, generals and brokers, far removed from the details of life, from the millions of activists who pushed change through, and from the ebb and flow of resources that drove the national engines.

As news events unfold in her life, I don't want her to accept them as a string of disconnected troubles – I want her to see that the price spike in oil is connected to the food riots in Haiti, that the plastic wrapper on the celery is tied to the Texas-sized floating garbage patch in the Pacific.

And – while no father wishes grief for his daughter – I want her to be able to grieve for the vanished pieces of our world, not because it is fun or useful, but because it is the right thing to do. Older people are sometimes shocked at what is no longer common knowledge – to high school graduates today, the world before September 11 or Google is as remote and theoretical as Vietnam was to me, or as Pearl Harbour was to my parents. I’m not sure how I feel about the disappearance of two of the world’s largest lakes from the jigsaw puzzle – I want her to learn, when she is older, that they used to be there.

At the same time, I don’t want her to be overtaken by grief. At a peak oil conference in Cork last year I met a man who had journeyed there from Australia on behalf of his teenaged son. His son, Tasman McKee, learned about peak oil in 2005, read the works of the most dire peak oil prophets, joined list-serves that pore over details of a coming die-off, and he became more and more convinced that nothing lay before him but a desperate and despairing future. After a year of this, he vanished, and only after reading his computer files did his parents learn of his obsession. His body was found on a remote mountain two months after his suicide.

I have been getting back in touch with old friends from environmental campaigns, and many have also fallen off the map. Few went as far as Tasman, or as far as a church pastor and Green activist I knew who killed himself a few years ago. But many feel defeated. They had warned of peak oil, climate change and economic collapse for decades – now, some say, it’s started. It’s too late.

I want to spare my daughter this. I want to instill, to whatever extent a father can, the high and driving Spirit, the sanguine craving to restore. Of course it is too late to change everything, and always has been. Everything is too big. But each of us can do something where we are, and there are millions of us.

We could look at the world's troubles and sink into grief, as we could when a fire sweeps through a forest or a flood wipes away a city. But forests and populations generally come back, sometimes better. We can mourn for the already extinct species, lakes and forests as we mourn our dead, but as long as we remain alive we are greater than grief. Nature will return, and with our help can return in time for our species to appreciate.

And for most of the world, it is not too late. Just a few years ago peak oil and climate change were obscure ideas, and they rapidly spread until they broke into the mainstream. We are trying to return to a simpler life, and so are millions of others – the largest movement ever, happening in every part of the world. I want her to know that we are not trying to turn the tide, for tides are natural. What is happening to the world was done by men, and will be undone. I want her to know, as Tasman McKee did not, that she is not alone.

So I try to teach her, in small and playful ways, how the outside world works, and the basic skills she might need someday. The lullabies I sing to her are old folk songs, because unlike pop songs today, they are meant to be sung by ordinary people together, and we might need such things again. When we pick weeds for soup I tell her what little I know of the plants that can be eaten and plants to avoid. I am proud that, when she was only two and was stung by a nettle, she immediately found the nearest dock-leaf in the grass and rubbed it on the sting – she had absorbed that one heals the other.

She loves animals as much as any child, and we talk in detail about where they live, what makes them mammals or birds or bugs, what they eat and what they do for us and each other. For now, it is just a game, but over time, perhaps, she will make connections.

She knows, in recited pieces of theory at least, how to cook, how to make yogurt and sourdough starter, how to compost. In time, I want her to learn how to ride and bridle, speak different languages, hunt, be sceptical, think logically and organize people. I can’t completely predict what she will face, nor can I plan her life, but I can show her a beginning.

But right now she is four, and is waiting for Santa. She patiently takes a single treat out of her Advent calendar each day, she helps make supper and she will fall asleep listening for reindeer hooves on the roof. Christmas is at this time of year for a reason, and not because we know when Jesus was born. It is just after the weakest day and the longest night, when the world prepares to be born again, when we take our first steps away from the darkness and ready ourselves for the arduous season ahead.

Fossil fuels are just sunlight from a really long time ago that was captured by animals and little organisms and was buried under the earth when they died. Over millions of years, it decayed and turned into a black gooey fuel called oil, which can be made into gasoline and power engines

Why would you tell a child such blatant lies? If we werent fed these lies our whole lives, we wouldnt be in the situation we are in. We'd understand a LOT more about Samuel Warren Carey's expanding earth and how abiotic oil is formed. Entire new avenues of physics would have opened up leading to advanced new technologies that tap right into the earth's core. We'd be able to do things unimaginable in this world that is currently trapped in a cage of lies.

If you're going to feed that fossil crap to children they are better off believing in the tooth fairy. Science based on deception and corruption will only lead us down the road to extinction. We need to unlearn so much of what we've learned... Children need to start out early learning the WSM (wave structure of matter).

I think alas Parker might grow up with the belief that EVERYONE in the world can switch as if by magic from oil to renewable energy, and at worse might become highly naive in what is likely to become a dog eats dog, mad max style world (it is to a degree of course already). It might have been wiser, without giving Parker nightmares to add that there are a lot of people who will refuse to accept change and will dislike those who try to break away from the accepted views of the present/past, and might think it is easier to take things for themselves (steal) to continue in their inertia ways. So Parker might want to consider self defense classes when he gets a bit older. It also might be worth while teaching Parker about ancient world history - Vikings, Pre Saxon world, or folk stories that kind of thing.