The climate it is a-changing. And so should we

"I want my child to be fluent in Mandarin," the parent of a 10-something-old told me a few weeks ago. "She'll thank me when she grows up. China is the world's most populous country, one of the fastest growing markets, and that's where the world's biggest spenders will continue to come from," she said with a certain amount of certainty that made me doubt my own parenting skills and sincerity. After all, I'd not thought of that logic before it was laid threadbare in front of me. I always thought that a global language would suffice in an increasingly globalised world. And that India will be the world's most populous in under 10 years.
Anyway, that isn't the point - it is that, as parents, it's our responsibility to ensure that our kids are ready for the future that awaits them. In that light, I'm glad that a meaningful first step has just been taken in the UAE towards addressing the biggest elephant in the futuristic room: climate change. A school in Dubai has become the first in the country to appoint a climate change teacher (yes, there is such a thing now). This has been possible thanks to the accreditation offered by the new UN Climate Change Teacher Academy for primary and secondary school teachers. It's high time we had such a programme of study for our kids - they will need all the preparation and awareness we can afford to give them to counter the mess that we're packaging as a legacy for them.
To be fair, with its Sustainable Schools initiative, the UAE took the lead as far back as 2009 to include sustainability in the curricula in select Abu Dhabi schools. That programme was later extended to cover all UAE schools. Knowledge is power, and by making our kids aware of climate change, we'll be guiding them on the road to finding a solution to this menace. It won't be too far-fetched to say that, when it comes to teaching climate change to our kids, all UAE parents speak the same language.