“Climate change is not a problem for the Earth, but for us, human beings.” so it begins The extraordinary planet A (Ideaka, Edelvives), the book that the meteorologist Martín Barreiro and his partner, the audiovisual producer Ana Mariño, have written thinking mainly about their children – aged 12 and 10 – and about filling a gap that they have detected in the communication of the climate crisis. “Many things have been told, but we believed that there were many more left to tell and, above all, that not everyone was being told,” explains Barreiro.
That first sentence of the book, focusing on this crisis as a problem for human beings fundamentally, is a declaration of intentions of how both have approached the explanations of global warming and the impacts it generates: with intellectual respect for the readers to whom they they go. “Children question many things and are very interested, and assuming that they will not understand something is assuming too much; We believe in their ability and their curiosity,” summarizes Barreiro, who presents weather information on weekends on TVE.
The book, which has just been published and has illustrations by Daniel Montero and Ángel Svoboda, is intended in principle for minors from the age of 10, although Mariño clarifies that the figures “provide a field of vision so that a child or a younger girl can enjoy it equally.” Even so, the fact that the border has been placed at 10 years is not arbitrary, explains Mariño: “it is the moment from which a child explores his environment, in which he begins to recognize that the world is not only him and his family, but there is more and it is part of a whole.”
Everything that surrounds them is marked by global warming, which goes far beyond the increase in temperatures that causes heat records to happen day in and day out. Because this crisis is also driving extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly frequent and harsh. Throughout The extraordinary planet A Episodes of torrential rains, extreme droughts, cyclones, heat waves are explained… And, again, with a vocation for scientific rigor. “The bulk of the book revolves around specific extreme weather phenomena that we have chosen based on real news,” Barreiro details. They all have “an attribution study.”
Attribution is, surely, one of the great leaps that climate science has taken recently. Because from talking about what could happen we have moved on to what is already happening due to climate change. Attribution studies focus on analyzing the role that global warming has played in a specific episode, such as a heat wave or floods. What is determined is the probability that this phenomenon would have occurred or not and with what intensity in a world not subject to this climate crisis, which is caused by the greenhouse gases emitted by human beings.
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“I’ve been working on this for 20 years,” explains Barreiro, “and before we talked about climate change, but always with a certain modesty because we couldn’t be blunt, until suddenly we have a tool that directly attributes, or with a very high probability, to global warming that a specific storm has been much larger or that a heat wave has been so long and intense.” And he adds: “many of the messages about climate change that came before were distant, very generic.”
As these are real events, they have very harsh consequences for the population, such as the 2022 Pakistan floods that caused a humanitarian crisis. “We have tried to smooth them out so that they are not too painful, but they are events that happen,” explains Mariño. Barreiro acknowledges that they have considered on many occasions how to approach these episodes to avoid “transferring eco-anxiety to children.” Because they aspired to the opposite: “we seek not to generate anxiety but rather action; Anxiety is a natural response to a fear, which is something we need to have, but what it can generate is inaction.”
![Reproduction of one of the chapters of the book 'The extraordinary planet A' (Ideaka, Edelvives).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/VMBI2JR3DVBP5P3ASMRERWXZMI.jpg?auth=16022b14c66fa971946e3a79bc76ee88383dae552754398c22a2d3a5ac46a0d0&width=414)
The way to avoid this is by proposing alternatives, as Mariño explains. “We show how different paths are being promoted in different parts of the world (…) Every day from the moment you wake up you can make certain decisions that, although they may seem trivial, are not and change the course of the day, the week, the year… And that extended to your neighborhood, to the society that surrounds you, can be decisive.”
Are they fumigating us?
The book also addresses and denies some widespread environmental hoaxes, such as airplane contrails and false climate manipulation. “This type of fake news can be part of a family dinner conversation, so I think it is important for the child to have a critical spirit and to know that behind these statements there is a broken phone that makes what they initially thought “It was news and it grew and became a lie,” says Mariño. Barreiro also warns that environmental hoaxes have crept “into daily conversation.” “There is a rise in denialism and nonsense.”
This meteorologist maintains that his book has “quite a few layers or levels of understanding.” “An adult can read it perfectly, because there are contents that are complex or dense enough that they encourage them to search for more about the topics being talked about.” And he says: “our intention was to leave a seed so that later more things grow and curiosity arises.”
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