Redesigning our world to put children’s needs first
Climate activist and beloved children’s musician Raffi talks about protecting kids in a warming world
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As kids, Raffi just got us.
When I was a kid, a unique feeling would engulf me whenever I heard Raffi sing. In a world of adults talking down to me, managing my time, and holding little patience for weirdness or rambunctiousness or noise, he seemed to see me fully and encourage it all. I felt accepted, held, respected, trusted. His songs seemed to marvel at my – and every child’s – innate capacity for wonder and imagination. They encouraged me to be silly and strange and curious. To explore, to take up space. To feel all my feelings. To go outside with no particular plan. To exist in all the vibrant and messy complexities of childhood. It’s total magic to now be sharing those same songs with my toddler. To hope – and then to smile and know – that he feels just as embraced and excited by the chords of “Bananaphone” as I did. (Oh, and if Raffi did not provide the soundtrack to your childhood as he did for so many born in the late 1970s onwards – especially but not exclusively in North America –- he is an absolute icon of children’s entertainment, and his most famous song is Baby Beluga).
Raffi’s reverence for children first found expression through music but it’s now expanded far beyond that. Recognizing that kids are the most vulnerable people in the climate crisis, he created The Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring, which calls for a societal revolution where we centre the needs of children in our climate response.
I had the honour of speaking to Raffi just in time for the UN’s Global Day of Parents, which is marked on June 1 to acknowledge parents’ commitment to children around the world. Here is our conversation.
Raffi’s lifelong love of the natural world
SK: I want to start with your personal evolution on climate issues. Have you always felt a connection to the natural world? It seems like you feel called to protect it, and I'm curious when that crescendoed for you.
R: I grew up in an Armenian family and we lived in Cairo, Egypt when I was born. I recall Sunday afternoon trips to the pyramids in my father's 1948 Studebaker car. It was two-tone green. I remember playing in the Cairo sands. But I was pretty much a city kid – I lived in Cairo in an apartment.
When we moved to Toronto in 1958 I was 10 years old. At that time it was a culture shock for me. But I recall my father driving us out to a place in southern Ontario called Belfountain Conservation Area. I was stunned by the beauty of the fall colors of leaves. Just stunned. Here’s a bit of trivia: I was 13 years old in 1961, and I drew a poster that won first prize among 5,000 entries. It was a Smokey the Bear Fire Prevention Poster Contest. I won a hundred dollars. My poster had a forest scene. And at the top it said, “Keep It Peaceful”. And there was a sign that said “No Hunting” and a bird was perched on it. So does that answer your question?
Throughout my career I've written songs celebrating our planet and the glory of nature. But I've never used the words “the environment”, ever. Not in one essay, not in any song. It's a reductionist phrase. We’re talking about Mother Nature that feeds us and sustains us. We depend on her. We are part of the natural world, it's not somehow set aside from us. We are kin. One of the climate songs I wrote is called “Do We Love Enough?” And I think that’s the question.
SK: When did you start to turn your focus onto young people and child honoring?
R: I was doing media interviews all throughout my career where I was asked, how can we give children our best? And from about 1990 on, I recognized that I was taking a systems approach to societal issues and the global crisis. I came to accept that I was a systems thinker. That just means you look for root causes and you connect the dots. So sometime around 1995, I was thinking about what a child-honouring society would look like. Most people think of child development, parental relations with the child and so on, but it’s so much more than how we treat our young at home.
So as if in response to that question, in 1997, I was awakened from a sound sleep with nothing short of what I call a vision. My jaw was kind of flung open as I sat up upright in bed. And in front of me were the words child honouring in the air. I knew right in that moment that I was being given a vision, I was being given something and it would be the work of the rest of my life to explore it. I knew in that moment it was a unique social change revolution with the universal child of our species at its heart. I knew all this in that luminous moment. This is how a meta-state, or a vision, operates. You can't know all this in a moment, but I was given the knowledge in that moment that this was a compassion revolution that connects person, culture, and planet.
So this is how the Covenant for Honouring Children came to be written. I was in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1999 thinking I wanted to write an emancipatory paper for children. That night I happened to be reading the Declaration of Independence of the United States. And that first line, “we find these truths to be self-evident”, well, I changed that to “we find these joys to be self-evident”. That all children are created whole.
How to talk to climate-anxious kids
SK: And so the philosophy calls for us to reorganize society around the needs of our youngest members: children. What do you see our society currently organized around and what do you think we’re getting wrong?
R: Our fossil-fuel-based economy puts money above all else, and the GDP – measuring societal progress – ignores social and environmental impacts of commerce as “externalities.” We need a triple-bottom-line, low-carbon economy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions boldly and rapidly. I call for Child Honouring to be the central organizing principle of sustainable societies. To reap the most benefits, we need to design with the child in mind.
SK: Right, and we know that the climate crisis will endanger kids more than anyone else. If you could wave a wand and get governments to design a climate change response that puts children first, what would it look like?
R: We are in a climate emergency, code red, as UN Secretary General Gutteres has said of the science in the latest IPCC report. Governments must engage emergency measures to rapidly lower greenhouse gas emissions, and to cease any new fossil fuel projects whether it’s LNG or pipelines. As Seth Klein has written in his book, A Good War, a systemic response to our existential global crisis will require a wartime approach to containing the climate threat. When both Canada and the US entered World War II, governments ordered civilian companies to change to military production. Similarly, government-mandated changes to optimize the use of clean renewable energies is needed, as well as rationing of fossil fuels. But national actions aren’t enough – we’ll need a multinational approach to taming what is truly a global threat. For the children of all nations.
SK: A lot of children are growing up now with an awareness of the climate crisis and some anxiety about it. You see really young kids at climate marches who carry a real feeling of responsibility that is their generation's issue to live with, and fix. How do we balance that with honouring their right to a childhood?
R: Kids are smart. They have an awareness. They're soaking in the anxiety that the adults are feeling. They can't not feel it. It's in the air. It's in our news, it's in our podcasts. But I advise we wait until they ask us about it. And my advice then to parents is: don't tell them everything. That’s not the point. The point is to meet the moment of concern. To reassure. And then if they have follow-up questions, they'll come to you and then you'll get into it in stages, depending on how much they can handle. It has to be done in a respectful way.
We're talking about young children under five. An eight-year-old will have different questions, obviously, than a four year old will. So we just meet the moment as best we can. Because their job is actually to look forward to their older years. That's the challenge, right? So we let them know they’re not alone in their concerns, that many good people are taking action in many ways. Fear of an existential threat is a natural response. It calls for compassion.
Using music as activism
SK: What would you say to parents experiencing anxiety about the kind of future their kids will have on this planet?
R: It’s a heavy thing to carry. You know what? You don't carry it on your own – you carry it with a circle of support. Or with a partner. It's too difficult to do this on your own. Individually, we’re feeling the pain of what we're losing and what we may lose in the future. We're feeling the pain of our children's futures being imperiled. These are psychological challenges our species has never faced before.
We have to realize that it’s not just a region of our world, but the whole world. We're talking about climate stability that took thousands of years to happen. It's that climate stability that allows what we call normal life. It allows us to make predictions about where we're gonna be when and so on. And we're gonna throw that away. For what? For what? For money?
SK: On a personal level, how hopeful do you feel about the future? Where does your hope come from?
R: Climate scientists are, to my mind, having a tough time with their messaging. They like to say the narrative of doom is not supported by the science. They say we can avert the worst-case scenarios of climate warming, and then they say… if we act now. I've been at this since 1989, waiting for action commensurate with the threat. And not seeing any, and so I go a little crazy. So I say, well, who's “we”? If “we” act now, well, who's “we”? And when is “now” over?
So. Climate scientists, climate activists, everyone, I challenge you to make the urgency of the situation clearer than that, because it's in action that hope comes alive. Hope to me is action. Not just individual actions of, oh, you know, using a little bit less of this or that. No, I'm talking about systemic actions that have a measurable impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
We know the science, we know how dire it is. Code red. Show me some action that makes us feel hopeful. So I want to turn your question into a provocative question to climate scientists and climate activists.
SK: What role does music play in helping young people (and older people) cope with climate anxiety and foster community around it?
R: That’s a great question. The civil rights movement had music. This little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine was a civil rights movement song. Same with, We shall overcome. That was one. Every movement needs music, and the climate movement is no exception. For that reason, I've taken time to write three or four climate songs.The best known of them is “Cool It”, which was released in 2007 in response to David Suzuki's nationwide tour. “Cool It” is very up-tempo. It's a rockabilly style. Very simple chorus. It’s pretty direct, right? Cool it, cool it down…very singable. And then in 2019, inspired by Greta Thunberg, to pay tribute to her and the millions of marchers, I wrote “Young People Marching”. Again, a very up-tempo rhythm, very strong song rhythmically. In that one I cite the decades of denial.
But here's my frustration: people who hear these songs say they love them, and yet, with all the contacts I have, I still couldn't get Greta Thunberg to say, oh, I've heard the song, thank you, or, or to use it. The David Suzuki Foundation doesn't use the “Cool It” video, even though David’s in it. So I don't understand the movement's reluctance to use music. We need all hands on deck. This is an emergency. And this has nothing to do with me. Whatever climate song gets people singing it, feeling it. Feeling it is the key. I say, why wouldn't we use these tools? So I'm trying to use my popularity with the tens of millions of Beluga grads in Canada and the United States. I'm saying use me!
Because it’s my public duty to use my voice in the preservation of a livable future. That's the work.
We at Gen Dread invite you to share your thoughts on how the climate movement can better leverage musicians like Raffi to advance our collective cause. Let us know in the comments below!
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Making Waves
We are excited to announce that our own Britt Wray will be an instructor for the upcoming Climate Psychology Certificate (CPC) Fall 2023 cohort at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)!
CPC provides additional psychological training and skills to competently and innovatively address the growing mental health impacts of the climate emergency. CPC is adaptable to various therapeutic orientations & utilizes an integrative and robust framework that includes multiple behavioral science approaches and philosophies, as well as a view into the broken systemic legacies from which painful eco-emotional conditions arise.
CIIS Public Programs will also be offering a $300 referral discount to all applicants who use the referral code CPCFA23. Once accepted into the program, you will be given an opportunity to use this code and receive the discount. CPC will take place as live synchronous learning via Zoom over five weekends. Applications are open through July 31.
As people get increasingly worried about the climate and ecological crises, the fossil fuel industry has gone on a major PR offensive to maintain their social license to operate. For anyone paying attention, it's pretty pathetic how transparent their efforts to convince the public that they are part of the solution, as opposed to the majority of the problem. This includes offering up false solutions. Huffzen represents every false solution they have from carbon capture, to offsets, to biofuels, and the list goes on. Huffzen is a shorthand to call out their carefully crafted by expensive PR and marketing firm bullshit designed with one purpose: To put you back to sleep. When you buy into their narrative, you might as well be huffing gas.
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‘Till next time!
Great interview with Raffi. I wanted to share a song that I created (actually a revision of an old anti-war song, written by Ed McCurdy, popularized by Pete Seeger, and recorded by many singers) as an anthem for the age of climate change. I purposely made it hopeful and think Raffi would find it appropriate for youth and older children (as well as adults). Let me know what you think and please share it with Raffi.
Last Night I Had the Strongest Dream
(To the well-known tune of Ed McCurdy's anti-war song, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream"
Last night I had the strongest dream,
A dream that seemed very sound.
I dreamed the world had all agreed
That carbon should stay in the ground.
I dreamed there was a great big room
And the room was filled with men and women
And the papers they were signing said
They’d never harm earth again and they meant it.
When the papers were all signed
And a billion e-copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed.
The people in the streets below
Were filled with hope and mirth.
They knew the future would be hard,
But they pledged to save the earth.
The children chose to lead the world
From darkness, driven by truth.
Their angry fears and hopes for change
Propelled the power of youth.
They joined with people of all hues,
Excluded, Native, or queer,
To elevate their rights to live
Free from poverty, illness or fear.
They worked to clean the air and soil,
The oceans, rivers, and streams,
Used wind and sun to power their lives
And realized all of their dreams.
They opened arms and borders to
The folks who fled heat and drought.
These emigres then proved their worth
Beyond all hate, fear, or doubt.
Last night I had the strongest dream,
A dream that seemed very sound.
I dreamed the world had all agreed
That carbon must stay in the ground.
And solar on every roof like Australia has started and an EV in every driveway,
paid for by fossil fuels.