Editorial: Let's put the same energy into stopping climate change as we do into arguing about face masks
Parents across the suburbs are spending a lot of time and energy advocating for what they see as the best interests of their children.
Debates over kids wearing masks in their schools have brought vocal and insistent crowds to board of education meetings, marches and social media pages.
The desire to protect kids during a new wave of COVID-19 is strong and understandable, given that 17,412 U.S. children have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and 371 have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. That's enough to put the disease among the top 10 causes of death for ages 1 to 19. Those opposed to mask mandates also feel strongly, and some plan to ignore an order by Gov. J.B. Pritzker requiring masks in public and private schools.
Students began the new term in some suburban schools this week, and we fervently hope in-person learning holds.
Decades from now, will memories of the face mask debate be lost among students' recollections of their pandemic learning years? Decades from now, will those students wish the adults in their lives had been equally attentive to and vocal about another hazard, one that by then could affect their lives in ways we haven't yet fully imagined?
It's certainly easier to debate the merits of a flimsy piece of pleated polypropylene than to confront a world's climate gone awry. That is a problem on a far bigger scale, one we might not conquer in our lifetimes. Yet, our children will remember us for the progress we make and the solutions we create.
A United Nations report on climate change this week drives that home with the sobering point that our kids will suffer the perils of the high level of atmospheric carbon dioxide wrought by mankind. Their lives will change over the next several decades with more violent weather, severe heat and drought, climatic disruptions and rising seas.
What happens beyond that - a leveling off when our children are middle-aged or catastrophe by the time they're old - depends on what we do now, says the U.N. study, which is based on increasingly sophisticated data science.
Such a stark existential choice makes the face mask controversy seem like fiddling while Rome burns. But we as parents have an unlimited capacity to work for our kids' better future. It's not a zero sum endeavor.
We hope vaccines will come soon for young kids, driving down cases and making the mask question moot.
But with the continued goal of our kids' safety - even when they cease to be kids - let's put equally hard work and just as much time into this crisis at hand: keeping a livable world for their generation.