“Dad, what’s global warming?”

I always ask my kids how school was and the answer, as usual, was some vague response.

“Good,” one said. “Good,” the other said.

“That’s good,” I said. “Shall we listen to some tunes?”

We were in the minivan. If I had only reached that dial a little quicker maybe I could have avoided a chain of events threatening to disrupt the dreams of school-children everywhere. “Dad?” one said, “what’s... global warming?”

They always sneak them in like that. Last time they asked a five dollars questions, I botched it so badly I made myself a rule requiring 24 hours before a response. But no. Kids want to know and I want to tell them. I found a phone booth, tore open my shirt to reveal my Superdad tights and cape and flew right into it.

“Well,” I said, “It’s one of two things. Global warming is either a debate about whether the earth is warming or it’s a fact that the globe is warming and the debate is how much of it is our fault, what it means and what we should do about it.”

Not bad, I guess. I wanted to provoke a little discussion, thought this was good.

“How can it be bad if the earth gets warmer?”

I explained about pine beetles, how winter usually kills the bugs that kill the trees. It doesn’t get quite as cold, the bugs don’t die so they kill too many trees and that’s bad because it can cause fires like that big forest fire we had in Kelowna a few years ago.

“Remember how it lit up the sky? Burnt all those homes?”

I cringed wondering how that sounds to elementary school kids. Goodness, I thought, I am going to keep them up with nightmares.

I tried a few other examples, like polar ice caps melting and flooding and stuff, trying my best to explain the difference between theory and fact and wiping sweat from my brow, wanting desperately to get them in front of a television.

“Would we be under water, dad?”

“Well, we sure hope not, don’t we,” I said, chewing on my fist. I back-tracked and said that any bad stuff from global warming is in the distant future. Something we should talk about, but not worry about too, too much. It’s a subject I expect they will talk a lot about in the next few years.

“Is it doomsday?”

Doomsday? Just what are they teaching in schools?

“No, no, no. Not really. I mean not right away. What I mean is, uh, when people refer to doomsday, it’s more like an instantaneous thing, like nuclear war,” I said.

“What’s nuclear war?”

I checked my hairline for signs of fracture or fluid and side-stepped right past WWIII. For all the good it did me. A half-hour later my arms were tired of digging this hole during which I explain the history of the planet, and why we should remember to turn out the lights.

It took all of 3.8 seconds to forget it all before I had to remind them again to turn off their lights.

I thought it was over. I wasn’t sure if I successfully walked that line between curious interest and worry for the future. The next day, one of them borrowed a book on the subject from the library. Well, he’s still interested, I thought. Good for him. Then he dutifully told me how he explained to some other kids all that was going on with global warming that he learned from his dad.

Oh, boy, what have I done?

Guest editorial; Marshall Jones, Black Press