BBC documentary takes eight children on a nature field trip to explore eco-anxiety

A dawn chorus begins with the chirping and tweeting of birds, wind blowing through the trees and a woodpecker hammering on wood. Dappled sunlight bursts through the forest canopy, and an evocative choir of children join the birds in song: We will stand up tall in the shadow of your power. For every empty promise, we will shout it even louder. No more sacrifice or compromise for profits, greed and lies. It’s time to build the future; Don’t ignore the children’s cries. This powerful opening to Climate Change and Me: Future Council, an environmental documentary currently showing on the BBC, quickly shifts to a lighter tone. After running over mossy undergrowth through the forest, the children respond cheekily to the director’s call for another take. Play can open up different learning and communication styles, particularly for younger children. This is something Australian director Damon Gameau taps into throughout the one-hour programme as he leads a fieldtrip around Europe. Eight climate-conscious children, selected from over 1,000 applicants aged nine to 16, travel together on the “Bumblebus” – a yellow American-style schoolbus, powered by biofuel – in pursuit of a brighter, greener future. The trailer for Climate Change and Me: Future Council. Aspects of this programme remind me of my own research. I work as a storyteller on a project called Birds, Bees, Bikes and Trees. Our team’s work is wide-ranging. Over the past three years, I have worked with a group of 20 young fathers to explore the everyday environmental actions they can (and often do) take. I have also led sessions in classrooms exploring urban relationships to nature through science and storytelling with more than 300 schoolchildren. Our design of these activities is shaped by care and curiosity, not anger or anxiety. I am drawn particularly to the BBC programme’s use of magical realism. This artistic style of storytelling is similar to a novum within science fiction – a literary device such as time travel that distorts reality. In making both the familiar strange and the mythical mundane, it can open our imagination to new possibilities. I use this approach in my own work. Why hide a world that has so much to offer? One of the drawings in Don’t Look Down. Michael Richardson, Author provided (no reuse) Don’t Look Down, for example is an upcoming children’s storybook I have created with primary schoolchildren in Newcastle and with Atomhawk, a video game art studio. Their illustrations convey an imaginary world abandoned by adults in a relentless pursuit of growth and innovation. Through this alternative future, a child can begin to ask questions of the world in which they live, and the stories they have been told about how to care for it. Back to the TV screen, and Gameau’s show features several scenes where some of the eight children are led to tears. There is sadness, anger and frustration. Some say they feel overwhelmed by pressure to make the planet a better place and fix a world which they did not break. By Lake Geneva, the children meet with climate activist Clover Hogan to offload some of their strong feelings. Hogan is also an eco-anxiety researcher. In 2019, she founded a youth-driven not-for-profit organisation called Force of Nature which brings young people into conversations with decision-makers. She explains to the children that their anxiety is a healthy response and shows that they care. Hogan says: “When we feel that sadness, when we feel that anger, when we feel that frustration, that is the internal alarm bell that tells us something is really, really wrong.” Read more: 2040: hope and action in the climate crisis The show advocates for involving children and young people in decision-making. This is both an admirable and achievable mission. At the Nestlé corporation headquarters in Switzerland, the children meet with the global head of public affairs for this food and drink multinational. They press him hard on Nestlé’s lack of climate action and on the firm’s excessive use of single-use plastic packaging. They called out “empty words and empty promises” and one challenged him with damning words: “You are not a powerful leader, you are a disgrace.” From anger to agency The film depicts the children’s anger as righteous. There is evidence to suggest that eco-anger is a more productive emotion than eco-anxiety. But there is a risk that young’s people activism plays into the trope of powerful elites, if too narrowly defined by either anxiety or anger. While both are key features of this programme, recent research identifies a wider range of responses to climate change. In doing so, the researchers encourage expanding our vocabulary on climate change and how we experience it, to avoid overly reductive responses to this environmental crisis. Informed by my own research, I had hoped to see more reflection on the transformative potential of nature for mental health benefits. Children should not be defined as being without hope, power or influence but nor should nature. Young people can claim their agency and be encouraged to actively build their green future, as my project will be doing at a green jobs career event for young people. That green future could involve the representation of younger generations on the boards of big companies, but it might also involve community power or nature-positive regeneration projects. The choice could be theirs.