CHILDREN OF THE CRISIS

A generation of kids faces a more dangerous world as they come of age in the era of eco-anxiety

- ALEX MORRIS

LAST SUMMER, JASPER MCTAGGART came to the abrupt realization that life as he knew it may be coming to an end. He was nine years old. It was lunchtime, and he was eating a sandwich in the dining hall of a New Hampshire summer camp. Sitting near him, a fellow camper had just opened a letter from home, and in the envelope was a news clipping with a picture from Paris, where temperatures were reaching record, fatal highs. Jasper looked up from the picture and at the faces of his friends. “We’re not in climate change now, are we?” he asked the table.

“Yes, we are,” his counselor confirmed.

Jasper couldn’t believe it. He sat there stunned.

A New York City kid, he had spent his time at camp that summer basking in the promise and excitement of the great outdoors, a playground big enough to hold a boy’s dreams of adventure. There was danger there, yes, but he would be kept safe. Adults knew how to keep children safe — or so he’d thought.

Now, sipping hot cider in a coffee shop near his Queens home, he shakes his head at the memory of this moment when he realized that maybe they didn’t. “I was shocked,” he says. “I didn’t know climate change was already in effect. I knew it was going to come — and possibly in my lifetime — but I expected it more in the distant future.”